NexGen Storage Delivers Industry-First Storage Performance Control For Software-Defined Datacenters

Guarantees Storage Performance for Virtual Machines with Storage QoS for VMware Datastores

LOUISVILLE, CO – NexGen Storage today announced new performance automation capabilities for Software-Defined Datacenters. NexGen’s ioControl 2.1 offers the industry-first ability to provision and guarantee VMware datastore storage performance. By offering embedded world-class performance intelligence along with the ability to provision and guarantee VMware datastore performance within vCenter, NexGen makes it easy and affordable for mid-sized enterprises to guarantee application performance in virtual environments. NexGen also unveiled new easy-to-understand I/O efficiency reports that give users new insight into performance gained from NexGen’s data reduction, designed from the ground up specifically for primary storage.

“The very concept of Software-Defined Datacenters underscores the need for storage infrastructures that can manage  mixed workload performance easily, dynamically and efficiently,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “To ensure consistent, guaranteed performance levels, such infrastructures require resource-usage and application-requirement information, and the ability to act quickly upon that to optimally manage the storage. Storage QoS for VMware Datastores, which NexGen embeds directly into vCenter, is helping to optimize virtual workload performance management.”

“With its differentiated Storage QoS offering and hybrid solid-state architecture, NexGen Storage is well-poised to capitalize on what we view as a rapidly growing storage market opportunity," said Henry Baltazar, senior analyst for The 451 Group. “The majority of data center workloads are virtualized today. As organizations move to virtualize their remaining applications, which are primarily business- and mission-critical apps, the need for storage solutions that guarantee each application has its required performance will continue to grow.”

NexGen’s ioControl 2.1 delivers a number of new performance automation capabilities, including:

• World-class Performance Intelligence. Enables smart, informed performance allocations by monitoring application workload data and key performance resource usage metrics. These metrics include per volume statistics, system response times and workload-specific metrics like block size and host queue depth.
   
• Storage QoS for VMware Datastores. Allows users to set guaranteed minimum levels of storage system performance directly on a VMware datastore in vCenter. Users can change the priority and storage performance of any datastore on-the-fly, in real time, and with no downtime. Other capabilities include virtual machine to datastore mapping along with monitoring system performance, capacity, alerts, and messages.
• Dashboard Efficiency Reports. Simple, click-and-view reports that monitor system I/O efficiency so users can easily measure the return on their solid-state investment and view the positive impact NexGen data reduction has on overall system performance.

These new performance automation features provide IT administrators the information needed to effectively manage VMware datastore performance.

“Our virtual infrastructure is evolving, and our storage requirements – especially around performance – are extremely demanding. We selected NexGen storage because of its ability to manage performance with quality of service,” said David Blaisdell, assistant director of information resources - IT, Colby-Sawyer College. “What’s more, we knew NexGen had data reduction capabilities but were skeptical of the impact on system latency. Since implementing, we’ve discovered that NexGen’s data reduction reduces latency on more than 90% of data we’ve provisioned.”

“By embedding world-class performance intelligence and industry-leading Storage QoS capabilities into vCenter, administrators have a new, straight-forward way to deal with virtual infrastructure performance issues,” said Chris McCall, vice president of marketing, NexGen Storage.  

Pricing and availability

ioControl 2.1 will be available December 14, 2012 on NexGen’s full line of n5 Series storage solutions. As with previous releases, ioControl 2.1 will be offered at no charge to existing customers. For more information, please contact NexGen Sales at sales@nexgenstorage.com.

About NexGen Storage
NexGen Storage offers the first PCIe solid-state storage system designed from the ground up to manage performance just like capacity. Unlike any other shared storage system, NexGen offers both Storage QoS for managing performance and Service Levels to ensure mission-critical application performance no matter what happens. At the same time, NexGen’s PCIe solid-state architecture avoids performance bottlenecks to offer the best price/performance ratio of any midrange storage solution. Committed to channel success, NexGen provides reseller partners registered deal protection and rich margins on every opportunity. For more information, visit www.nexgenstorage.com.