This post is also available in: Italian

During the recent VMworld Europe, I’ve got the opportunity to talk with Steven Willson (VP Technology Services EMEA at Violin Memory) and Eric Herzog (Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of Alliances at Violin Memory) of Violin Memory about their storage products and their users cases in virtualization projects. I’ve already met them one year ago, during the past edition of VMworld Europe and this was the opportunity to know the news about those months.

As I already written in the previous report, their storage are completely flash based, but the big difference from other similar approaches (like Nimbus Data and Pure Storage) is that the flash are not mounted on SSD (or PCI) but directly connected to the storage system, this to avoid the SAS interface of the SSD and reduce potential bottleneck.

Their Violin 7000 and 6000 all flash storage represent the top class of system in the storage world but, of course, also their target are really high (those solution are not for all, considering also the price).

They have also a Windows Flash Array (WFA) solution that combine Violin Memory’s patented Flash Fabric Architecture, Microsoft’s fast SMB Direct protocol, and Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 means you can optimize your Windows Server environment to deliver consistent high performance on a simpler architecture with reduced CPU load for every byte, every time.

But the really news compared to previous years are some specific appliances that can be added to existing environments:

• Concerto 2200 Data Reduction Appliance: announced in August 2014, this is a solution that enhances the Violin 6000 or 7000 All Flash Arrays to support NFS environments. The high-availability Concerto 2200 software provides inline deduplication and compression, dramatically reducing the amount of data written to the Violin All Flash Array(s). The Concerto HA pair connects to the Violin All Flash Array(s) by Fibre Channel and attaches to the NFS network via Ethernet to provide data reduction services. Virtual desktop and virtual server infrastructure are two key solutions areas and when optimized by the Concerto 2200 can bring several benefits-
• Maestro 2510: powered by the Maestro software suite and hardware optimized, the Violin Maestro 2510 delivers enterprise data management services to transform your performance-challenged, fibre channel SAN-based IT environment into a high performing all-flash data center with no disruption to your applications. Patented hardware-accelerated algorithms built into the Violin Maestro 2510, combined with the expansive functionality of the Violin Maestro data services software suite, enable a risk-free and disruption-free transformation to a highly efficient, flash-based data center.

So not only full flash storage but also appliances to improve features (and performance) of existing full flash storages or for migrating data from existing storage.

And, of course, more integration with existing software, like with vSphere using the Violin Memory Storage Management Plugin for vSphere.

Andrea Mauro

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.