Storage Performance

The task of maintaining peak storage performance is critical for the modern storage administrator. More and more mission-critical applications rely on the shared storage infrastructure for real-time activities.

The fact is, these new storage technologies have absolutely improved storage performance, flexibility and manageability, but they have not solved the issues generated at the file system level, such as the tidal wave of unnecessary I/O caused by the Windows OS splitting files apart upon write.

This surplus of unnecessary I/O is a phenomenon that affects storage space, causing it to be used inefficiently thereby reducing storage capacity and performance. Excessive I/O causes bottlenecks, which result in a significant increase in latency, application freezes, system hangs, long disk queue lengths, and more problems.

Storage-Performance

How do I increase my storage performance?

As storage solutions and infrastructures have evolved, so have solutions to address performance. “Prevention is better than the cure” is a popular and very IT applicable maxim. That philosophy, applied to preventing unnecessary read and write I/O with DymaxIO’s IntelliWrite® and IntelliMemory® I/O optimization technology, is the ultimate solution to maximizing performance of modern storage solutions.

DymaxIO® uniquely addresses the unnecessary I/O patterns of reads and writes by aggregating data on writes to perform sequentially while caching reads on available server memory without contention to the application. As a result, DymaxIO boosts application performance by 50% or more by (1) maximizing the efficiency of every single I/O from write requests that leave the server and (2) caching the most active data from read requests using available server memory.

Read I/O Optimization – Much of the I/O traffic moving through the infrastructure shares similar data, yet every byte of that data travels the entire distance from server to storage and back for every I/O request, even when it is frequently accessed data. IntelliMemory® technology addresses this read request inefficiency by caching the most active data in the server’s available memory. Should an application require more memory, DymaxIO serves memory back to the application to ensure there is never a case of memory starvation or resource contention. Condusiv Technologies’ self-learning caching algorithms have set the gold standard for the industry as they are OEM’d by eight of the top ten largest PC manufacturers in the world.

Write I/O OptimizationDymaxIO’s IntelliWrite® technology optimizes I/O write operations, eliminating the performance penalties associated with the Windows OS, splitting files into pieces and writing each piece to a different logical location within the SAN or NAS. DymaxIO is aware of space allocation and aggregates writes to behave sequentially—requiring less I/O for every file written. Subsequent reads also benefit, since only minimum I/O is required to fulfill the request. As a result, only productive I/O requests are processed across the entire infrastructure, enabling more data to be processed in the same amount of time.

When only productive I/O traffic is processed through the server, network and storage, I/Os per second are accelerated, latency is greatly reduced, and more work can be performed in the same amount of time. This greatly improves the efficiency of all VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual platforms and physical servers for increased bandwidth.

DymaxIO I/O optimization is tailored for virtual environments that leverage a SAN or NAS as it proactively provides I/O benefit—improving storage performance and benefiting advanced storage features like snapshots, replication, data deduplication and thin provisioning. Since DymaxIO optimizes I/O at the server level, it is complementary to all SAN and NAS storage systems and media types (e.g., HDD or SSD).

Download a free trial of DymaxIO fast data software and put it to the test in your real-world environment »

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What People are Saying

Slide “2X Faster SQL & Oracle!” University of Illinois Slide “Doubled Performance!” Alvernia University Slide “ERP Twice as Fast!" I.B.I.S. Inc. Slide “Cut Backups in Half!” School City of Hammond Slide “Saved Millions in Hardware Costs!” CHRISTUS Health Slide “Undelete Saved My Bacon many Times!” Charles Chang, Support Technician, Alert

What People are Saying

“Typically, IT professionals respond to application performance issues by reactively buying more hardware. Without the luxury of a padded budget, we needed to find a way to improve performance on the hardware infrastructure we already have. It saved us from having to make a heavy investment in SSDs or do a complete rip and replace of our entire hardware infrastructure. To this day, I still can’t believe software is doing this.”
R. Ortiz, IT Manager, ASL Marketing

“I have used Diskeeper since it was first introduced. It has always worked well in keeping my drive defragged for the fastest response times for all of my apps. Thank you again for this fine piece of software.”
Philip Baldwin, NVQB

“The Undelete software that we use on all our Regional Servers is undoubtedly worth every penny. It
has saved our Techs numerous hours in restoring files inadvertently deleted as opposed to having to
restore from backup tape.”
Michael Lucas, Gancom (Division of Gannet Fleming)

“Undelete saves backup restores when someone accidentally deletes a file from a Windows share. We store tapes off site so Undelete can save a big delay for file restores of that type. Undelete does what it says on the box – really – and it works nicely as a network recycle bin.”
Glenn Edwards, Infrastructure Analyst, Itron

“I have been using Diskeeper for many years, it is installed as a routine on all servers, networked clients, SHO and any other computer. It has never presented any problem and has always demonstrated improved drive performance in both servers and clients. With each new release Condusiv does not merely provide “window dressing”, they actually improve the product with the objective of making it easier to use, more reliable, more effective and easier to use.”
Mark Sills, Systems Administrator / Manager, Home User