Edge virtual server infrastructure separates remote storage from remote servers for centralization
February 1, 2012
Riverbed Technology today announced its new Granite product family to support a new architecture it calls edge virtual server infrastructure (edge VSI). Granite provides a means to consolidate and manage remote operations by moving the servers, remote applications and storage to a central facility without impact to performance. Likened to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that allows IT to consolidate client applications and data within the data center, edge VSI provides similar control benefits but without the cost penalty of VDI. In fact, the company says that users achieve a 20% to 50% lower total cost of ownership.
Granite solves bandwidth and latency problems over distributed networks at the storage block level. This allows storage and services to be delivered globally from a centralized facility without throughput penalties. File system intelligence is added to the block layer, which parallelizes interactions between server and storage that were otherwise sequential. This means that distributed data and servers can now reside in one place.
Granite requires two components: Granite Core, a physical or virtual appliance in the data center, and Granite Edge, a service running on a Steelhead EX appliance in the branch office. The EX appliance combines solid state drives with high-speed local drives, which can operate quickly due to WAN optimization and powerful caching algorithms. The Granite architecture is available now.
Our Take: Edge VSI and WAN acceleration can jump-start an organization’s movement towards a private cloud without the application modifications usually implied by the step. IT organizations can achieve the benefits of centralized servers and storage without degradation of services. Riverbed’s worldwide footprint enhances the feasibility of this approach for medium to large-scale enterprises.– James E. Bagley
