Formulus Black Forsa 3.1 Enables In-Memory Storage for Application Using Intel Optane

Formulus Black Corporation announced Forsa 3.1, with enhancements to its software-defined product for performance storage.

It provisions either industry-standard DRAM or persistent memory media as POSIX compliant block storage, allowing existing applications to run in-memory without modification.

The version Forsa 3.1-Intel Optane DC persistent memory Edition leverages Intel Corp.‘s Optane DC persistent memory‘s App Direct mode to provide lower latency, higher throughput, and persistent block storage for data intensive and latency sensitive workloads. The company’s LEM storage devices (Logical Extensions of Memory), are POSIX compliant, enabling any application to run on persistent memory or DRAM without modification and benefit from the enhanced feature set and expanded enterprise storage functionality of the Forsa LEM.

“For processing data quickly, it is no longer necessary to spin up additional expensive compute to compensate for the bottlenecks of slow peripheral storage,” said Jing Xie, COO, Formulus Black. “Forsa’s persistent memory powered LEMs enables data to persist closest to the CPU, unleashing profoundly faster data processing by minimizing the time CPU waits on data. This results in multiple TCO reduction opportunities while increasing performance with greatly improved query speed, transactions per second, and 99^th percentile.“

In recent tests performed by StorageReview.com, Forsa running on a Lenovo SR950 with Intel Optane DC persistent memory enabled 10,591 TPS at 23.5ms 99^th percentile latency for mixed read/write MySQL workloads. Compared to using ‘fast’ local NVMe SSD storage, Forsa provisioned Intel Optane PMem storage enabled over 2x more TPS at less than 1/5^th the latency.

“The software ecosystem around persistent memory continues to grow,” said Alper Ilkbahar, VP and GM, memory and storage products group, Intel. “With the latest version of Forsa from Formulus Black, customers can now take full advantage of the transformational storage and latency benefits of Intel Optane DC persistent memory.“

FORSA 3.1 offers a high performing and feature rich block storage solution for Intel Optane DC persistent memory.

Forsa 3.1 brings advanced in-memory storage and virtualization features
to Optane DC persistent memory including:

NURA architecture ensures I/O performance, load balancing, and NUMA awreness
Advanced data reduction in real time on persistent memory via Formulus BitMarker encoding
HA support for host level and KVM based workloads
Real time bad block detection and Retirement for Persistent Memory
Enhanced GUI for single pane of glass management of multiple Intel Optane DC persistent memory nodes

Forsa software utilizes server memory and advanced data management capabilities to improve processing speed, increase effective memory capacity, and protect vs. data loss. With it, large database and analytics workloads can persist and run in memory on commodity server hardware with no changes to the application.

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