Western Digital Boosts VMware vSphere Performance

New virtualisation products from Western Digital claim to significantly improve virtual machine performance in VMware vSphere environments, as the two companies continue their ongoing relationship.

The first of the two products, borne from Western Digital and VMware’s two-year co-design marriage, is FlashSoft 4, designed for VMware vSphere 6.

FlashSoft 4 software is based on an architecture that uses the new VMware vSphere APIs for IO Filtering (VAIO), providing a high level of usability and performance with vSphere 6. FlashSoft 4 also introduces support for VMware-supported datastores, virtual disk acceleration, improved performance and stability, and integrated management through the vSphere web client GUI.

SanDisk Accelerator

Secondly, Western Digital has brought Flash Virtualisation System to the table

This flash-based hardware and software product pairs FlashSoft with SanDisk ION Accelerator software and Fusion ioMemory PCIe solid-state accelerators in a flash-provisioned server capable of delivering over a million IOPS² to bump up storage I/O across the VMware environment.

Without disrupting current server and storage infrastructure, the system offers cluster-wide flash acceleration in existing VMware environments.

“These new product innovations resulted from the deep ongoing engagement between our companies and are expected to greatly enhance virtual machine performance. We look forward to expanding possibilities of the new architecture to continue delivering high-value solutions for our customers,” said Ravi Swaminathan, general manager of Western Digital’s data centre business.

“The VAIO framework represents the next generation of integration for third party data services integration in vSphere environments, enabling leading software solutions providers to align with VMware’s vision for the software defined data centre,” said Yanbing Li, storage general manager at VMware.

“Western Digital’s support as a design partner for VAIO and the introduction of their new FlashSoft software illustrates the important role that our partners play in delivering on the promise of the software-defined data centre.”

Take our cybersecurity quiz here!