Deep Learning for CIOs: How to Improve Performance for the Most Demanding Enterprise Applications

Data storage is evolving for large companies. Innovation around artificial intelligence has been advancing the field rapidly, but the biggest differentiator for data infrastructure and enterprise applications is proving to be the adoption of deep learning. As a subset of machine learning, deep learning is enabling a better approach for a company’s most demanding, real-time applications. 

Paul Nashawaty, Senior Analyst at ESG, said, “Our market research has affirmed that some enterprise applications require ultra-low latency and extremely high performance. Striking this balance and maximizing the speed have been a challenge, calling for a new approach that goes beyond conventional approaches.”

He went on to add, “The strategy to make the back-end persistent storage completely solid-state technology and get the very best performance from any media is a new way of thinking about how to better address performance-sensitive applications.”

At the core of this new way of thinking about data storage are deep learning capabilities. Making these capabilities easy to use, software is where the “magic” happens with automation. The performance optimization of a deep learning-driven storage platform is producing unprecedented numbers that smart CIOs are catching on to.

The CIO of Tyler Technologies already has experience with this improved performance that had previously been unheard of. He attributes the success to the storage architecture itself.

“The InfiniBox architecture has been a game-changer for us, as it helps us meet our SLAs to the business around performance, guaranteed 100% availability, support and ease of use,” said Matt Bieri, Chief Information Officer at Tyler Technologies. 

“Our most demanding applications, representing about 5 percent of our workload, require sustained sub-millisecond latency. We’re excited to bring in the InfiniBox SSA, which leverages the same InfiniBox architecture, Neural Cache and feature set, for these ultra-high performance workloads,” he added.   

The InfiniBox SSA™ is the only solid-state enterprise storage system that exploits true deep learning software to optimize performance. It also uses the only storage architecture in the world that stores data and metadata using a Trie structure. These facts disrupt the way many enterprises have been approaching data storage for years. InfiniBox SSA derives its faster-than-AFA performance through the extensive use of DRAM cache enabled by Infinidat’s patented Neural Cache software.

“Our established InfiniBox system disrupts conventional all-flash arrays, delivering a unique and very compelling combination of performance, scale, availability and cost for the vast majority of enterprise workloads. The InfiniBox SSA now extends our capabilities to meet the most intensive enterprise storage requirements,” said Phil Bullinger, CEO at Infinidat.

The InfiniBox SSA is powered by Infinidat’s proven deep learning software algorithms coupled with the extensive DRAM cache. It consistently delivers performance and latency results that surpass all-flash arrays (AFAs), while providing the same customer experience, 100 percent availability, and uncompromising reliability of the InfiniBox.

Representing the first Infinidat model that uses 100% solid-state technology for back-end persistent storage, the InfiniBox SSA has proven itself as the fastest enterprise storage system in history. DRAM and solid-state drives (SSDs) are both solid-state technologies, but DRAM is an order of magnitude faster than flash-based SSDs.

Infinidat’s CEO said, “The innovation of our new solid-state array is squarely focused on demanding enterprise applications requiring the highest levels of performance with consistent, predictable low latency for virtually every I/O.”

InfiniBox SSA has seamless integration with most leading IT applications and platforms, including databases, analytics, hypervisors, containers, and backup software. It supports 3x more VMware vVols than any other storage system. InfiniBox SSA management is through an easy-to-use HTML5 GUI that presents every storage function in an intuitive user-centric view. InfiniBox SSA supports RESTful APIs, and robust SDKs for Python and Java. InfiniVerse® integrates with major higher-level AIOps offerings from ServiceNow, Virtana, BMC, and others.

A large enterprise customer put the InfiniBox SSA through rigorous testing and compared it head-to-head with the major all-flash array solutions. “We chose to deploy the new InfiniBox SSA because it is the highest-performing, most resilient and most consistent enterprise-class storage solution on the market today,” said a Fortune 500 insurance company, which requires enterprise-class storage at multi-petabyte scale.

“The InfiniBox SSA surprised us by outperforming every AFA product, achieving 3x the original captured performance with 40 percent lower latency, even during multiple failure scenarios. Now, we are able to support our higher-demanding service level agreement profiles on the SSA platform better than we have ever been able to do with any other storage product.”

The InfiniBox SSA for profiles requiring consistent ultra-low latency is complementary to the standard InfiniBox system for general-purpose applications, which are the vast majority of enterprise applications. A common software base between the standard InfiniBox and new InfiniBox SSA provides seamless, transparent data mobility between the platforms, enabling customers to reduce overall TCO while optimizing latency based on application demands.

By offering both the InfiniBox and the InfiniBox SSA systems, Infinidat enables large enterprise customers to consolidate and address their application workloads with the right mix of performance and latency—at the right cost.

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