Atlantis Computing Brings Out Storage Optimization Software

AAt GigaOM’s Structure Cloud Computing Conference, Atlantis Computing, Inc., provider of storage optimization software for virtual servers and desktops, introduced Atlantis ILIO FlexCloud 1.0 to address the challenges of storage-intensive applications in the cloud: performance, cost and the ability to scale-out on demand.

Based on its technology in desktop virtualization, the software product makes it possible for enterprises and service providers to change the economics and performance of storage-intensive applications in the cloud.

As organizations virtualize servers, applications and desktops and move them into the cloud, traditional storage is not always able to deliver the required performance and economics at scale. Google and Facebook’s platforms as well as big data frameworks like Hadoop have already replaced shared storage with various forms of local storage to cut cost and scale-out linearly. However, this approach is less efficient for IT teams leveraging virtualization in their cloud computing environment to load storage-intensive applications on demand as each specific application workload requires a physical server with dedicated storage throughput and capacity.

ILIO FlexCloud 1.0 brings the benefits of a virtualized cloud computing environment to storage-intensive applications: elasticity and the flexibility to use the storage fabric in place to deliver virtualized applications on demand as needed to support more users or handle larger data sets.

"With our success in the desktop virtualization market, we are constantly asked by customers to bring to market solutions for virtual servers that optimize storage utilization like we do for VDI," said Bernard Harguindeguy, CEO of Atlantis Computing. "With the introduction of Atlantis ILIO FlexCloud, we are demonstrating how our technology has the flexibility to deliver similar performance, cost and scalability benefits to server virtualization and the cloud."

ILIO is a storage optimization solution delivered for VDI in 2009 and is an enabler of the large VDI deployments including JPMorgan Chase, Colt, CBRE and Washington Trust Bank.

"When we first tried to deploy desktop virtualization, we ran into performance problems and weren’t able to scale until we deployed Atlantis ILIO software to optimize how the virtual desktops use storage," said Chris Green, VP of IT Infrastructure, Washington Trust Bank. "Today, every time we add virtualized servers, we have to purchase a lot more storage to ensure that we have enough capacity and performance available for the application. We look forward to extending our use of Atlantis ILIO technology to virtualized servers."

ILIO FlexCloud 1.0 is application-aware storage optimization software that complements virtualization solutions from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware. The solution processes all storage IO traffic within the hypervisor to decrease the amount of IO sent to storage and boost application performance. As a result, storage is used more efficiently as less is needed for a given application and more applications can be supported by the storage fabric. It can also be configured to use server memory (RAM) as tiered storage enabling clustered applications that require processing massive amounts of data to operate efficiently in scale out shared storage environments.

ILIO FlexCloud 1.0 Features

• Application Characterization – Identifies and maps storage IO traffic characteristics of application and responds intelligently based on patterns.
• Inline IO Deduplication – Eliminates duplicate write and read IO traffic to reduce the amount of storage traffic.
• IO Processing – Processes IO requests from the hypervisor so that processing occurs in memory instead of being serviced by storage resulting in improved overall performance.
• Scatter/Gather Coalescing – Transforms smaller randomized IO traffic into easier to consume larger sequential blocks to boost network and storage efficiency.
• Fast Clone – Creates new virtual machine clones on demand using Atlantis ILIO without copying data from storage or introducing performance overhead.

Availability
ILIO FlexCloud 1.0 is in private beta and is expected to be available this summer.