PernixData FVP 2.5 has been released and now extends its capabilities with new interesting features. FVP 2.5 is GA and ready for download.
PernixData FVP solution puts storage intelligence into server flash and RAM improving VM performance, IOPS that scale-out with compute and lower storage costs.
FVP can accelerate any supported VMware storage (FC, FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, local host datastores) bringing benefits to all environment:
- VM performance improves
- Reduces I/O hitting the SAN and Array
- Less peak load
PernixData FVP functionalities and features have been already discussed in my previous posts, so check out for additional info:
What's new in FVP 2.5
Three new main features have been introduced with this new release:
- DFTM-Z
- Intelligent I/O Profiling
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
DFTM-Z
Distributed Fault Tolerant Memory (DFTM) introduced with FVP 2.0, allows RAM to be used as acceleration resource in addition to flash devices. In FVP 2.5, DFTM-Z increase the capability with adaptive memory compression using the open source LZ4 compression algorithms, that's why "Z".
DFTM-Z is automatically enabled on the host when more than 20 GB of memory is given to the FVP cluster and it provides high compression ratio at a low cost. Compressing RAM brings benefit of having more effective RAM space saving costs for the total RAM used in hosts.
Accessing the FVP Cluster view, the Summary tab reports two values as Capacity:
- 128 GB is the real number of flash and RAM resources available to the FVP cluster
- 133,91 GB is the value of memory with compression
Intelligent I/O Profiling
Since not all workloads benefit from the acceleration provided by FVP, this new feature allows FVP to have a different behavior for different workloads on the same VM. Large sequential I/O don't benefit from the FVP acceleration but may impact on the performance.
A database could run a heavy workload and FVP acceleration would provide a big benefit while a backup process would impact negatively on performance.
Using profiles, FVP changes the configuration depending on the workload type: system identifies I/O profiles that are not suitable for server-side acceleration and automatically send them right to shared storage bypassing local server media.
This solution maximize the performance of these workloads types and also the performance of workloads who use acceleration making flash and RAM resources available for storage acceleration when needed.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
With RBAC, the FVP environment is more secure by granting appropriate access to authorized individuals with a more control over who can do what.
There are three levels of access to the system:
- Read and Write – users can view FVP configurations, usage and performance charts and they can change configurations
- Read-Only – users can view FVP configurations, usage and performance charts but they can't change configurations
- No Access – users don't have access to the system
FVP Editions
PernixData FVP comes with the following editions:
PernixData FVP 2.5 can be downloaded from the Support Portal (requires login). Additional info can be found in PernixData website.
