Server Side Caching isn’t a totally new concept, but it is a hot market right now as storage providers try and push the speed limits of their perspective platforms. The 3DXPoint water cooler talk is all the craze, even if the product isn’t available to its full potential.

Infinio is a server-side caching solution I have been benchmarking as a potential offering to customers, and I have been very impressed with the quick results. Being able to reduce Read latency (400% in my case) in as little as 15 mins, is what sold me.

Infinio Accelerator is built on three fundamental principles:

1. The highest performance storage architecture is one where the
   hottest data is co-located with applications in the server
   As storage media has become increasingly faster, culminating in the
   ubiquity of flash devices, the network has become the new bottleneck. An
   architecture that serves I/O server-side provides performance that is
   significantly better than relying on lengthy round-trips to and from even
   the highest performing network-based storage. By serving most I/O with
   server-side speed, as well as reducing demands on centralized arrays,
   Infinio can deliver 10X the IOPS and 20X lower latency of typical storage
   environments.
2. A “memory-first” architecture is required to realize the best
   storage performance
   RAM is orders of magnitude faster than flash and SSDs, but is price prohibitive
   for most datasets. Infinio’s solution to this problem is a
   content-based architecture, whose inline deduplication enables RAM to
   cache 5X-10X more data than its physical capacity. The option of evicting
   from RAM to a server-side flash tier (which may comprise PCIe flash, SSDs,
   or NVMe devices) offers additional caching capacity. By creating a tiered
   cache such as this, Infinio makes it practical to reduce the storage
   requirements on the server side to just 10% of the dataset. Long-term
   industry trends such as storage-class memory are another indication that a
   memory-first architecture is appropriate for this application.
3. Delivering storage performance should be 100% headache-free
   Infinio’s software enables the use of server-side RAM and flash to be
   transparent to storage environments, supporting the use of native storage features like snapshots and clones, as well as VMware integrations like
   VAAI and DRS. The introduction of Infinio begins to provide value
   immediately after a non-disruptive, no reboot, 15 minute installation. This
   is in sharp contrast to server-side flash devices used alone, which can
   provide impressive performance results, but require significant
   maintenance and cumbersome data protection.

What does Infinio do exactly?

Infinio Accelerator is a software-based server-side cache that provides high
performance to any storage system in a VMware environment. It increases
IOPS and decreases latency by caching a copy of the hottest data on serverside
resources such as RAM and flash devices. Native inline deduplication
ensures that all local storage resources are used as efficiently as possible,
reducing the cost of performance. Results can be seen instantly following the
non-disruptive, 15-minute installation that doesn’t require any downtime, data
migration, or reboots. 70% of I/O request are Reads (on average), most of your I/O Reads will come directly from super-fast Ram

How does it actually work?

Infinio is built on VMware’s VAIO (vSphere APIs for I/O Filters) framework,
which is the fastest and most secure way to intercept I/O coming from a virtual
machine. Its benefits can be realized on any storage that VMware supports; in
addition, integration with VMware features like DRS, SDRS, VAAI and vMotion
all continue to function the same way once Infinio is installed. Finally, future
storage innovation that VMware releases will be available immediately through
I/O Filter integration.

In short, Infinio is the most cost-effective and easiest way to add storage
performance to a VMware environment. By bringing performance closer to
applications, Infinio delivers:
• 20X decrease in latency
• 10X increase in throughput
• Reduced storage performance costs ($/IOPS) and capacity costs ($/GB)

Final Thoughts

Honestly, there could not be an easier solution that provides as dramatic results as Server-Side caching. Deploying Ininfio when you are in a performance jam provides immediate relief, and should be part of your performance enhancing arsenal. There is a free trial as well, and remember, there is no downtime to install or uninstall Infinio in your environment.

Please reach out to myself, or your Solution Provider to learn more and test drive Infinio Accelerator. NetWize IT Solutions.