Please can you provide some brief background on the X-IO Technologies?
X-IO Technologies was founded as the Seagate Advanced Storage Group in 2002 before being acquired by Xiotech in 2007.
The company’s mission was to design a “post-SAN” scalable storage array that solved the storage industry’s most intractable problem: the inability of SAN vendors to produce a scalable storage architecture that provided performance, capacity and reliability, with zero trade-offs. And so the Intelligent Storage Element or ISE was born.
After a re-branding to X-IO, the company has focused exclusively on development and sales of the ISE product line with the successful launch of the ISE-2 and Hybrid ISE products in 2011.
Today, X-IO Technologies has more than 1,200 customers using over 7,000 first and second generation ISEs for desktop and server virtualisation and database application acceleration inside the enterprise and in the cloud. Recognised for its unique performance, reliability and manageability features, the ISE continues to win new customers and industry awards. X-IO’s storage arrays carry the industry’s only five-year no-cost warranty and the only rated-performance-at-rated-capacity guarantee. Asked to describe their ownership experience, many ISE customers will say: “it just works”.
And who are the key personnel involved?
We have a strong leadership team that has years of storage experience:
David Gustavsson is our Chief Operating Officer and is instrumental in aligning the engineering, technical marketing, manufacturing and support functions within X-IO. CTO Richard Larry has been in the industry for 40 years and previously worked as an independent consultant and technical advisor to several emerging storage companies.
VP of worldwide marketing Gavin McLaughlin has been at X-IO since 2011 and has worked in the industry since 1987. He leads all marketing efforts including outbound communications including press and analyst relations, core communications, channel and field marketing, as well as strategic alliances and technical marketing.
After joining X-IO, I went on a listening tour for five months to around 30 of our customers, partners and prospects. I asked them what they were doing with the product, what they liked about it, what their concerns were, and I came away completely impressed with the product quality.
The management team is really focused on delivering a high-quality, market-relevant product that delivers on the company’s promise of consistent high performance and reliability.
And you recently announced some new board members?
Yes, Matt Bross, chairman and CEO at Compass EOS, and storage veteran Bill Miller have joined the board of directors. Also, Alastair MacWillson, Chair of The Institute of Information Security Professionals, joined us recently as a strategic advisor.
The experience and seniority of these individuals reflects X-IO’s growing appeal and market presence. Bill, Matt and Alastair all see the huge opportunity opening up for X-IO as we shift from being a technology focused organisation to a solutions led company.
Please can you provide a brief overview of X-IO’s technology offering?
Based on two decades of invention and investment by veteran storage industry experts, X-IO Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) systems deliver unmatched price/performance, reliability and scale storage for enterprise and cloud applications and infrastructure.
ISE storage systems provide a carrier-grade, scale-out high-performance storage infrastructure with a five- to seven-year operating lifespan, two to ten times the performance of alternatives and 30-70% of the total cost of ownership of rival products.
ISE storage systems achieve that scale and performance by focusing on the effective interoperation of hardware and software with one another. The basis of ISE performance and reliability lies in its proprietary, patented hardware design.
What does it bring to the market that’s different from storage networking competition?
There’s two key differences. We have custom built hardware that ensures phenomenally higher levels of performance and reliability than traditional storage vendors. That’s why we can uniquely provide “zero touch” hardware that requires no intervention for at least five years once installed.
However we also have unique, patented software to enable real-time intelligent adaptive flash storage. We don't use caching; we have a lot of intelligence that moves data backwards and forwards between hard disks and flash constantly and we can soak up “bursty” workloads. VDI is a great example of this, which is why we have focused on that solution stack.
In more detail, please can you tell us about the Intelligent Storage Element (ISE)?
Each ISE storage system is a completely self-contained storage building block designed to accelerate server and desktop virtualisation solutions, as well as transactional, reporting and business intelligence applications, by a factor of three or more. The ISE is available in all-HDD variants (ISE 200 series) and hybrid variants (ISE 700 series).
For virtualisation and RDBMS-based workloads, our all-HDD ISE 200 units routinely out-perform competitive hybrid storage arrays, while our ISE 700 hybrid storage arrays consistently outperform competitive all-flash storage arrays. ISE units scale linearly, in 3U increments, and can be mixed in any combination to tune the underlying storage infrastructure for particular workloads.
ISE storage systems are designed to scale so full storage performance is maintained no matter how many are added to increase capacity.
And the ISE Software?
In addition to the unique, real-time software mentioned above, the team has developed a full suite of ISE management applications and integration to simplify the operations of data centres and maximise the performance of storage solutions. These enable storage to be simply managed directly, through Hypervisors such as VMware’s vSphere, or even through a RESTful API.
Using our patented software technology, every drive in an ISE can be taken into repair mode, power-cycled and remanufactured just as it would be if it were RMA’d to the drive’s supplier — all while the ISE continues to operate at full performance and full capacity.
And the X-IO portfolio is completed by a NAS offering?
Yes, the File Storage Controller 2200 (FSC 2200), couple with an ISE is an ideal NAS solution, offering predictable application accelerating performance, cost effectiveness and the highest availability.
The FSC 2200 covers what X-IO believes is the core enterprise application performance range: 400 to 8,000 IOPS for every 1 TB of provisioned storage. This range is above that of utility and archival (Tier 2) storage and below that of real-time, ultra-high-performance applications. It covers the performance range of performance-sensitive data files, associated with desktop and server virtualisation, OLTP applications, data warehouses and business intelligence environments (as well as most Big Data environments).
X-IO offers both block and file storage solutions – is it important to be able to offer both?
File level storage is a great option when you just need a place to store raw files but a lot of businesses are starting to demand the flexibility of block solutions. By offering both we are reinforcing the message that it’s no longer about the technology itself – it’s about finding the right solution for your business needs. For years now we have seen storage admins trying to fill a round hole with a square peg but that’s just not the way the industry works anymore.
And the appliances themselves are available in HDD, hybrid and all-Flash configurations? In other words, how much storage tiering flexibility does X-IO offer?
This is a really key point for X-IO. There are many storage vendors out there that will have you believe that “one size fits all” and flash memory is the answer to all storage requirements. This couldn’t be further from the truth as some applications are better suited to flash, while some applications are more efficiently and even faster running on traditional hard disk drives. X-IO not only provide the ability for customers to choose, but where application sets are constantly evolving, then its real-time intelligent adaptive flash technology lets the storage system move the date on the customers behalf without compromise.
And do customers have to buy pre-packaged appliances, or can they put together their own storage networking solution using elements of X-IO’s technology?
Both. Again, flexibility is key for our customers. We can provide standalone ISE units of varying configurations, alternatively customers can buy our “X-Pod” solutions which combine ISE storage with Cisco’s UCS server range to provide pre-architectured solutions such as with VMware Horizon View VDI with 1,500 high end VDI users connected to a single Hybrid ISE.
One of your marketing soundbytes is ‘Run fast, forever’ – what does this actually mean?
The storage industry has for far too long become accustomed to compromise. It’s suddenly become acceptable that hardware intervention is required occasionally and that it’s only possible to fill a storage array to 75% before performance degredation occurs when in fact this couldn’t be further from the truth. With X-IO, the performance you get on day one will be the same at day 1,800, regardless of utilization. Customers will experience the same levels of consistently high performance at 99% as they did at 1% full.
You also describe X-IO technology as ‘self-healing storage’ – what is this?
X-IO ISE storage systems repair and restore failed media, rather than requiring drive replacements and other service events: this is a unique capability of the ISE’s design and implementation, made possible by a combination of hardware, firmware and software features within the ISE. The unique, patented mechanical packaging of the ISE reduces vibration, a major cause of drive loss and failure, to nearly zero. Even when a drive cannot be recovered at full capacity and full performance, the ISE recovers and restores the drive at reduced capacity and performance by off-lining single heads or platters.
And can the ISE software be used to control other storage appliances or is it only for use with X-IO products?
All ISE software is designed for the X-IO ISE range of products only. It takes advantage of some of the unique hardware elements of the ISE storage system.
Can you tell us a little bit about how X-IO can help customers address some of the current industry ‘hot topics’ such as VDI?
We're seeing that, particularly with workloads like VDI, it's becoming more important to use media such flash memory where appropriate. A lot of vendors are talking about flash storage, but they usually approach it from the point of saying customers need an all-flash array. Flash can help, but we see flash as a tool to help us solve problems rather than as a solution itself. VDI is a classic example of an unpredictable workload, so it’s important that any storage system can constantly re-layout data and adapt to the environment to ensure a smooth, consistent user experience.
When it comes to VDI, many vendors will publish figures showing quotes such as “supports up to 750 users” but using theoretical numbers based upon I/Os per user and then using inappropriate testing tools such as IOmeter. Instead, X-IO utilise benchmark testing tools such as Login VSI which applies real-life workloads to the storage and can even tune towards high-end users such as AutoCAD designers. Providing real-world tests such as these rather than synthetic theories are one of the reasons that our customers trust us with unpredictable workloads.
And server virtualisation (in all ‘flavours!)?
Since the X-IO ISE is, in essence and by design, a virtualised storage engine in a 3U form-factor, it is ideally suited for the “I/O blender” environment produced by large-scale server virtualisation environments. Operating as a single pool of storage under the control of the hypervisor, ISE systems ensure the proper mix of flash and hard disk storage is allocated to the VMs supported by the hypervisor and that high-demand virtual machines get their data via the fastest-available media class, regardless of the workload profiles of other virtual machines.
Unlike traditional enterprise storage arrays (which over-provision capacity to provide server virtualisation environments with the minimum required IOPS) and upstart hybrid storage arrays (which cannot run at rated performance when their used capacity exceeds 60-70%), the X-IO ISE comes with a rated-performance-at-rated-capacity guarantee, This means our server virtualisation customers get all the IOPS they pay for and they can use 100 per cent of each ISE unit’s rated capacity without losing any of its rated performance.
And transaction processing?
Online transaction processing (OLTP) applications remain the operational core of most businesses. When OLTP applications slow, perform below expectations or become unreliable, a company’s core business processes reflect that immediately.
The ISE is designed to accelerate online transaction processing applications, intelligently and automatically keeping transactionally-hot data on flash to speed current transactions, while simultaneously providing terabytes of fast-read, fast-write storage for operational reporting. Conventional storage solutions fail to understand that operational nuances of the database management systems (DBMSs) that underpin most OLTP applications (and typically bottleneck current transaction wall-clock time), can make it expensive, sometimes dangerous, to retain OLTP historical data for operational reporting.
And Big Data?
The ability to integrate Big Data environments into an IT organisation’s methods and practises for operating production technologies is at least as important, in terms of cost-effectiveness, as the performance characteristics of those environments. The ISE allows organisations to operate conventional RDBMS-based applications and exotic Big Data environments on top of a common, high-performance storage pool. It provides extreme levels of performance acceleration for all data-intensive applications, whether those applications are deployed on top of merchant DBMS technologies or exotic Big Data environments.
Whether a customer’s Big Data workloads are characterised by complex, high-volume SQL, proprietary statistical analysis, large MapReduce streams, or intricate extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) logic executed against petabytes of Hadoop-stored data, X-IO’s ISEs provide the industry’s most cost-effective method of underpinning Big Data environments with ultra-high performance, high-reliability storage infrastructure that scales out, or scales up, as applications require.
And, of course, the Cloud/hyperscale?
For the Cloud Service Provider, storage decisions are not merely technical, they are also economic. At X-IO we think there are three primary dimensions to the cloud storage decision: price/performance, configuration and change management and total cost of ownership.
Our ISE product line scales from less than 20 TB to hundreds of petabytes, one 3U unit at a time, with between 50,000 and several million IOPS and up to 2 GB/second of throughput per ISE. It is expressly designed for use in high-performance, variable-demand, virtualisation and DBMS environments, where balanced performance and scalability are crucial.
There seems to be growing momentum behind Object Storage right now. Is this something of interest to X-IO, or not?
X-IO provides high levels of consistent performance and high reliability within in a block storage environment. This of course can provide the foundations for Object Storage, however we do not provide our own solution stack for this environment.
And OpenStack seems to be gaining significant traction right now. How does X-IO view the whole Open movement?
With a keen focus in the Cloud Service Provider marketplace, it’s absolutely key that X-IO has an offering for customers adopting the OpenStack platform. Our engineering team have been working hard on both OpenStack drivers and also creating a dashboard plug-in. This will be released at the beginning of 2015.
At the end of the days, we realise and appreciate that customers have a large amount of choice when it comes to reliable platforms and it’s important that X-IO don’t inhibit that choice through limited operating system support.
Are there any other industry issues/technologies that you see making a significant difference to the storage networking landscape in the next year or so?
Throughout 2015 I expect, and hope, to see more awareness of the marketing hype and, quite frankly, misdirection and lies used in the storage industry. For too many years there’s been an increase in the amount of over-inflated claims by storage vendors with regards to performance and efficiency (such as compression and de-duplication figures). The car industry has been forced to evolve from “best-case” miles-per-gallon statistics and use more real-world “urban” figures and it’s time for the storage industry to do the same.
During 2015, another trend will be the further reduction in cost of flash storage but with the ability to last in excess of five years when used appropriately. This could make it possible to have an all-flash array that can be truly zero touch for long periods with a sensible price/performance ratio. Until now, deploying all flash has meant compromising through increased cost or increased risk (or both).
And what can we expect from X-IO itself in this timeframe?
Wait and see! We have some exciting new product releases coming in the New Year that allow the use of storage media technologies without compromising our core principles.
Please can you provide one or two brief examples of how X-IO has helped customers overcome a storage pain point?
One of our US customers, holSystems, delivers high-performance hands-on labs, instructor-led labs, demos and seminars directly from the cloud. The company was experiencing huge growth and its mixed storage environment was causing I/O bottlenecks and a decrease in performance. We deployed an X-IO ISE 200 Series performance storage array that provided an ideal balance of price, performance, capacity and reliability, eliminating the previous storage pain holSystems faced.
Another customer, Florida-based health plan provider AvMed, came to us when its legacy infrastructure was struggling to support its VMware vSphere VDI environment as more users were added to the system. AvMed’s VDI environment is critical to provide important staff with access to training in their classrooms and for workers in the field to use applications quickly and securely while keeping private information in the data centre. Since moving to X-IO’s ISE, AvMed is down to one support call per week and has cut log in times by more than 90 per cent.
