Q&A with Dr. Allon Cohen of SANRAD
VSM: Tell us about SANRAD.
AC: SANRAD is an established player in virtualized storage access and has applied its expertise to the development of FLASH maximization solutions, which provide both software- and appliance-based solutions to speed storage access. SANRAD’s unique approach provides the best way to extend the benefits of FLASH storage across multiple servers and storage devices in a virtualized data center environment. It utilizes host and network-based FLASH to create bottleneck-free, high-speed SANs, reducing operating costs and TCO for the virtualized enterprise data center.
SANRAD’s application optimization increases virtual machine software efficiency by dramatically boosting storage performance, decreasing storage response times to fractions of their original values and speeding application transaction-per-second counts.
VSM: How has your business changed in the past year, in terms of technology?
AC: We have expanded our focus from being an appliance player to developing a host-based full-featured software virtual appliance that enhances the performance of virtual machines using host-based FLASH in VMware, Hyper-V and Xen environments.
VSM: What business need is your technology addressing?
AC: FLASH in the data center is an enabling technology that allows VMs to achieve unprecedented performance and efficiency. The sales growth rates of enterprise FLASH are far exceeding the sales growth rates of traditional hard disks. But just because you have added the latest technology to your SAN network, does not mean that you are maximizing its utilization. By combining our software with existing and new FLASH infrastructure, they instantly have faster access, more secure data and resilience.
VSM: What does your technology actually do?
AC: SANRAD’s new software maximizes the operations, efficiency, and ROI of FLASH in server virtualization environments. The VXL software maximizes the server virtualization environment for enhanced system performance and higher FLASH utilization.
SANRAD’s VXL software provides organizations with the most efficient and cost-effective way to accelerate performance of virtual applications without having to reconfigure their virtual server applications. SANRAD's solution negates the requirement for caching agents in each and every VM. FLASH is dynamically distributed among all accelerated applications, providing optimal FLASH utilization regardless of the number of concurrently running applications.
SANRAD’s VXL software supports:
- Application-optimized FLASH acceleration
- Dynamic FLASH allocation
- SLA protection for high-priority applications
- vMotion, including cache migration
- Live data migration
- High availability and data mirroring
Running on VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen-based hypervisors, it ensures VM migration among hosts without loss of cached data and enables cache migration for vMotion.
