What’s new in vSphere 6.5 Core Storage

Hello from VMworld EMEA in Barcelona. Well, we can finally talk about vSphere 6.5 today. In this post, I want to highlight a number of new and enhanced features that you will find in vSphere 6.5 related to core storage. I am not going to discuss Virtual SAN (VSAN), Virtual Volumes (VVols) or I/O Filter enhancements (VAIO) specifically in this post, although you will no doubt see some new features tie directly into the latter. Instead, I want to talk about those features that are specific to core storage.

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.…

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.