Violin scale-out memory platform accelerates Windows applications

Violin Memory has announced a high-performance, scale-out memory array platform that runs Microsoft enterprise applications at the speed of memory. Together, Microsoft and Violin have optimized Windows Server 2012 R2 for an all-memory persistent storage solution that sets new standards of performance and economics for large-scale enterprise cloud deployments. With native support of Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2, the Violin scale-out memory array platform enables customers to deliver continuous and highly available enterprise application services in the cloud with ease and scale.

Wednesday, 16th October 2013 Posted 11 years ago in by Phil Alsop

“The future of the datacentre is clearly memory,” said Don Basile, Violin Memory CEO. “Violin’s scale-out memory platform for Windows is the ideal solution for running massive scale clouds.”

By running Windows applications natively on the platform, and leveraging the use of native Microsoft management tools, customers can create an enterprise cloud with no boundaries. Enterprise applications, including SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Exchange along with Windows Server Hyper-V virtualization and Server Message Block (SMB) file services, benefit from direct access to persistent memory for lower latencies and higher performance. With the ability to scale out performance and capacity seamlessly, the Violin memory array platform delivers the most economical infrastructure for Microsoft-based enterprise clouds.

“Windows Server 2012 R2 delivers groundbreaking scalability to enable customers to evolve their virtualized and global-scale cloud environments,” said Chris Phillips, Partner Director PM at Microsoft. “By using Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Violin Memory scale-out memory array platform, our joint customers can achieve the scalability and performance requirements of their most demanding workloads in the cloud.”

According to Jim Handy, principal analyst at Objective Analysis, “The Violin announcement shows a new approach to computing that we are likely to see more of in the future, since it allows processing power to scale linearly with added hardware. A data centre with a number of memory nodes with compute capacity should provide significant performance advantages over one in which data must be moved into and out of a number of servers."
Violin scale-out memory array platform is designed to meet the performance, availability and scalability requirements of the most demanding applications in the cloud. Each Violin Memory array in the scale-out platform:
· Delivers more than 1 million IOPS
· Scales from 8TB to 64TB of memory capacity
· Delivers sub-second failover and
· Provides I/O access with latency measured in microseconds.