Nutanix Granted Patent for Its Software-Defined Storage Architecture

Nutanix is granted a patent for its storage architecture for virtualized data centers, Nimble Storage advances its Infosight analytics with new forensic capabilities, and Avere Systems launches the FXT 4800 edge filer for enterprise storage.

Nutanix is granted software-defined storage patent. Nutanix announced hat it has been granted a patent (US 8,601,473) from the United States Patent and Trademark Office recognizing the company’s fundamental storage architecture for virtualized data centers. The patent provides clarity as to how software-defined storage solutions are optimally designed and implemented, detailing how a system of distributed nodes (servers) provides high-performance shared storage to virtual machines (VMs) by utilizing a “Controller VM” that runs on each node. The Controller VMs aggregate the local storage resources across all servers, including direct-attached flash, and delivers a shared pool of data storage that is functionally equivalent to a SAN or NAS array, but with greater scalability and higher performance. “While virtualization has brought impressive flexibility to both applications and server infrastructures, it has also outpaced the capabilities of popular storage products that have dominated in the previous IT generation,” said Brian Byrne, Principal Engineer at Nutanix. “Nutanix’s research and development teams are re-imagining what storage architectures need to look like to enable the next generation of data centers.”

Nimble Storage launches new InfoSight analytics.  Nimble Storage (NIMBL) announced new performance analytics capabilities within Nimble Storage InfoSight. These forensic capabilities are key enhancements to the predictive analytics InfoSight has offered providing real-time monitoring, reporting, forecasting and planning capabilities to customers. InfoSight allows customers to obtain a holistic view of their storage environment through its cloud-based data collection engine that automatically collects comprehensive data around the overall health of their storage, including performance, capacity, and data protection.  The ability to automatically identify these challenges eliminates the days or weeks spent with manual data collection and analyses and professional services fees, while ensuring systems run at peak health. “Performance issues cost companies money, decrease employee productivity and can affect customer relationships," said Rod Bagg, vice president of customer support, Nimble Storage. "The ‘old school way’ of scouring through hundreds of data sets to identify an issue is inefficient, and is just that -- old school. By automating this process through InfoSight we are allowing customers to get back to ‘business as usual’ an order of magnitude faster than traditional triage methods. In addition, end users will experience a new level of customer service as their trusted channel partners gain access to deeper insight into their current storage environment.”

Avere launches FXT 4800 Enterprise storage. Avere Systems announced the release of its FXT 4800 Edge Filer, the newest solution to Avere’s FXT Series. Key features of the FXT 4800 include higher density SSDs to bring the total capacity for the FXT 4800 up to 4.8TB, and faster hex-core CPUs to increase performance.  It features 144GB DRAM, 2GB NVRAM, Flash SSD capacity of 4.8TB, and dual 10GE ports. In a 50-node cluster it provides a high performance and high capacity tier for as many as 50 NAS and object-based Core filers. “The new FXT 4800 Edge Filer is the next logical extension of our Avere 4000 series,” said Jeff Tabor, senior director of product marketing at Avere. “Faster CPU enables our customers to reach higher performance levels, and as always, our Edge-Core approach optimizes response time to users and enables centralizing storage for cost savings and simplified management.”