Atlantis Software-Defined Storage Optimizes Data Servers

Is software-defined storage the "biggest game changer since server virtualization"? That's a mightly claim, but Atlantis Computing appears confident it will prove true in the wake of the release of a new software-defined storage platform called Atlantis ILIO USX, which takes advantage of virtualization to bring drastic improvements to storage efficiency for Big Data and much more, according to the company.

The product expands Atlantis's focus from desktop virtualization, which is the speciality of the Atlantis ILIO platform for optimizing Citrix (CTXS) XenDesktop and VMware (VMW) Horizon View VDI deployments, to include server virtualization as well. With the new ILIO USX software, the company aims to allow enterprises to pool together existing data nodes into a streamlined software-defined storage infrastructure.

ILIO USX also makes it possible for organizations to take advantage of in-memory storage features to create hybrid, hyper-converged or all-flash storage using infrastructure that already exists.

In essence, the platform is designed to eke out all of the performance it can from existing storage resources and combine them into a single storage platform where the advantages of flash, RAM and other high-performance storage are fully leverageable. In this way, according to Atlantis, the product enables enterprises "to do more with less storage by consolidating and increasing the efficiency of existing storage." Specifically, the company says, the optimization makes it possible to deploy up to the five times as many virtual machines on existing infrastructure while reducing costs by 50 percent.

That's probably a theoretical, best-case estimate of just how much ILIO USX can optimize performance. But even if real-world scenarios are less stunning, Atlantis has expanded into a rapidly growing niche within the data storage world, where improving performance without adding new cost is becoming increasingly common thanks to software-defined storage techniques. Like its cousin, software-defined networking, software-defined storage is making physical infrastructure less important, allowing enterprises to attain next-generation performance on legacy hardware.