Slides from my Storage Policy Based Management presentation now available

My Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) presentation slide deck is now available online. This is the presentation that I delivered at a number of VMUG (VMware User Group) meetings this year in Europe, primarily Norway and Poland. SPBM is an integral part of VMware’s software defined storage vision, and is deeply integrated into vSAN, Virtual Volumes (VVols) and VAIO, the vSphere APIs for I/O Filters. Hope you find it useful. 2017 VMUG Storage Policy Based Management from Cormac Hogan

A closer look at the Infinio Cache Accelerator I/O Filter

The folks over at Infinio were kind enough to send me their latest Cache Accelerator I/O Filter so I could set it up in my lab. I must say, this seemed to be the most intuitive of the VAIO plugins (vSphere API for I/O Filters) that I have used to date. In this post, I just want to run run through the deployment of the filter, as opposed to looking at any of the potential performance benefits. If you want an overview of VAIO, have a read of the write-up that I did from VMworld 2014 here. I’ve also looked…

Virtually Speaking Podcast Episode #12 – VAIO

Every week, the VMware Storage and Availability Tech Marketing team (John Nicholson and Pete Fletcha) run a podcast show called the Virtually Speaking Podcast. This week I am a guest on their show, alongside Rich Peterson of FlashSoft. We spoke about VAIO, the new vSphere APIs for I/O Filters. While I described some basic features on VAIO, Rich describing the Cache Acceleration VAIO implementation for FlashSoft 4.0, created by the FlashSoft team over at SanDisk. This is the first fully certified VAIO implementation and I  wrote an article about it last month that you can read here if you wish.…

FlashSoft I/O Filter VAIO Setup Steps

Last week I had the opportunity to drop down to San Jose and catch up with our friends on the FlashSoft team at SanDisk. In case you were not aware, this team has been developing a cache acceleration I/O filter as part of the VAIO program (VAIO is short for vSphere APIs for I/O Filters). SanDisk were also one of the design partners chosen by VMware for VAIO. This program allows for our partners to plug directly into the VM I/O path, and add third-party data services, such as replication, encryption, quality of service and so on. An interesting observation…

PrimaryIO announce VAIO (I/O filter) for cache acceleration

I got a bit of a surprise a few weeks back when I noticed a register article by Chris Mellor stating that PrimaryIO (previously CacheBox) had announced a new cache acceleration I/O filter for vSphere. We first announced plans for VAIO (vSphere APIs for I/O Filters) back at VMworld 2014. VAIO allows VMware partners to plug their products/features directly into the VM I/O Path which in turn will give our customers access to 3rd party storage services/features like deduplication, compression, replication or encryption which may not be available on their storage array. Or in this case, a cache acceleration feature.…

A closer look at Infinio Accelerator 2.0

I took the opportunity last week (while I was over in the Boston area) to catch up with Scott Davis. I’ve known Scott a long time, as he had various roles at VMware over a number of years. Scott is currently CTO at Infinio, a company that has developed an I/O acceleration product for virtual machines. The new version of Infinio Accelerator 2.0 released only a few weeks back, so I decided to reach out to Scott and find out about the enhancements that went into this new version.

VMworld 2014 – Storage News Part 1

Yesterday was my first day at VMworld 2014. As usual with this event, there are simply so many interesting announcements that it is hard to keep track. However, for me, there were a few things which stood out in the storage space worth calling out. These are specifically VMware focused products and features. I know that many of our partners have also made announcements in the storage space, but for today I concentrated solely on VMware. There are the two that really caught my attention.