Fusion-io, a flash storage specialist headquartered Salt Lake City, Utah, has earned a big vote of confidence from virtualization heavyweight VMware.
The company announced during VMworld 2013 Europe in Barcelona that its ION Data Accelerator software (v.1.3.0) and ioControl 2.0 Hybrid Storage products “have achieved VMware’s highest level of endorsement,” namely VMware Ready status.
VMware Ready is a partner program in which products optimized and validated for vSphere and Horizon View are given the company’s endorsement, as denoted by the VMware Ready logo. VMware Ready can cover applications in addition to IT management, networking, security, compute and mobility solutions, and in Fusion-io’s case, storage.
Afshin Daghi, vice president of Systems Engineering for Fusion-io, detailed in a statement the effect his company’s VMware Ready certified offerings can have on organizations. “With Fusion-io shared flash solutions, like ioControl Hybrid Storage or ION Data Accelerator, integrated with VMware vSphere, enterprises can virtualize even the most challenging, data intensive workloads,” he stated.
“By using Fusion ioMemory solutions for shared storage with VMware vSphere 5.1, enterprises can eliminate the storage bottlenecks that can otherwise severely limit application performance,” added Daghi.
Fusion-io’s ION Data Accelerator, which debuted last year, is software that leverages the company’s PCIe flash drives to create a shared, server-side data acceleration platform that speeds application performance and helps smooth over performance bottlenecks between servers and SANs. “Powerful software can be the foundation for incredible innovation, especially when it’s also an open system that shares resources,” said Fusion-io Chief Scientist and Apple Co-founder, Steve Wozniak during its launch.
ioControl Hybrid Storage products stem from Fusion-io’s acquisition of NexGen Storage in April for $119 million. As the product line’s name suggests, ioControl Hybrid solutions combine flash storage with hard disk drives, but with a twist.
Rather than slot solid state drives (SSDs) into storage arrays, NexGen dropped PCIe flash cards into the controller. The tactic, according to the company, imbues the entire storage system with accelerated performance that originates from the compute bus and bypasses inefficiencies that pile up as data wends its way across storage subsystems. On Oct. 15, Fusion-io announced a software update to the underlying ioControl software (3.0) aimed at small and midsized businesses (SMBs).
Sanjay Katyal, vice president of Global Alliances and OEMs for VMware, noted that the VMware Ready logo on those products signify “to customers that they have met specific VMware integration and interoperability standards and they work effectively with VMware cloud infrastructure.” As such, deploying them “can speed time to value within customer environments,” he added.