An Intellyx Brain Candy Brief
There’s an old saying in computer science that there’s no problem harder than properly configuring a cache. Getting caching right is especially difficult when we add of flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) to the mix, as they are faster but more expensive than traditional disk-based storage.
Avere addresses this challenge with an appliance (both physical and virtual) that uses local SSDs as a write-back cache. Via sophisticated network-attached storage (NAS) optimization algorithms, Avere is able to achieve a remarkable 98% hit rate for typical big data uses of storage.
A cache hit rate reflects what percentage of requests can be served by the cache, as opposed to the underlying, ‘root’ data. As a result, the higher the hit rate, the better the performance.
Avere’s near-100% hit rate positions it as being as effective as a content delivery network (CDN) at bringing big data interactions to the edge, with one important difference: since Avere implements a write-back cache, it enables bidirectional edge computing beyond the capabilities if today’s CDNs.
Avere specially configures its appliances to squeeze every bit of performance out of its software, but its software also works well in the cloud as well, for example, by leveraging Amazon’s elastic block storage (EBS) on flash-based SSDs.
Copyright © Intellyx LLC. Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. To be considered for a Brain Candy article, email us at pr@intellyx.com.
