Centralized storage caching

Centralized storage caching

By Gary Orenstein

A new approach to storage caching that centralizes the resource and uses Ethernet, IP and Network File System can serve RAM-cached files 10 to 50 times faster than mechanical disk-based approaches.

Delivering high-speed, high-capacity caching as a shared network resource for I/O-intensive requests means data centers can reduce the need to overprovision storage and guarantee QoS for all NFS-based application servers and storage systems.

The need for centralized caching is due, in part, to the fact that it is hard to coherently distribute memory across servers or storage for end-node caching. Typically memory is replicated across devices to balance performance, and each server or storage system maintains a unique memory pool.

But mixed workloads can result in underutilized resources, and servers and storage devices have a finite memory capacity so the need to increase overall memory requires adding systems, and that may result in wasted CPU or storage capacity

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