More IT organizations are moving to a software-defined approach to infrastructure to build a scalable, modern, resilient and secure data center, and storage is no exception. The pace of change in the data center coupled with the rapid increase in data growth is making the traditional approach of purchasing storage for a particular workload type or environment, is quickly becoming unmanageable. Customers are looking for a universal storage that can be deployed anywhere they manage infrastructure that can support all the workloads that they run, from traditional VMs to Kubernetes-orchestrated, container-based workloads, at any scale.
However, IT isn’t willing to compromise on the storage requirements – it must provide the performance, resiliency and scale that their workloads demand. In the past, customers evaluating traditional storage alternatives may have felt they would need to make compromises to adopt a more modern approach; however, recent advancement in storage virtualization software coupled with CPU innovation have erased those gaps.
VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware’s premier private cloud platform, with VMware vSAN as the storage component. Recent advancements in VMware vSAN, vSAN Express Storage Architecture and vSAN Max, deliver consistent, high performance for mission-critical applications, rapid, agile scaling and unified, simple operations across environments. Coupled with Intel’s 4th Generation Xeon Scalable Processors, it makes a powerful storage solution.
We recently partnered with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to validate the performance of VMware vSAN 8 with Express Storage Architecture and Intel’s 4th Generation Xeon Scalable Processors. The ESG validation underscores the transformative impact of the combined solution. It not only achieves higher performance and efficiency but also ensures consistent scalability and superior support for AI workloads. Businesses can thus optimize their IT infrastructure, reducing costs while meeting the demanding performance needs of modern applications. Read on to see the results!
Boost Performance and Lower Latency
- Performance Gains: ESG’s validation demonstrated that VMware vSAN 8 ESA on Intel Fourth Generation Xeon Processors delivers up to 6.2 times higher performance compared to previous generations.
- Reduced Latency: Latency is a critical factor for business-critical workloads. The validation revealed that the combination reduces latency by up to 7.1 times, ensuring smoother and faster application performance.
Consistent High Performance Across Diverse Workloads
Scalability is essential as businesses grow and their IT needs evolve. ESG’s testing confirmed that VMware vSAN 8 ESA maintains high performance and low latency even when scaling out various workloads:
- Traditional Workloads: In tests simulating SQL database operations, VMware vSAN 8 ESA provided consistent performance as workload intensity increased. The system managed a high volume of transactions with minimal latency, proving its capability to handle traditional business applications efficiently.
- Modern Workloads: For NoSQL databases like Apache Cassandra, the solution showcased superior performance, particularly in high-density scenarios. ESG found that as the number of virtual machines (VMs) increased, the system maintained or improved its mean rate per VM, demonstrating robust scalability without compromising performance.
Superior AI-Enabled Workload Performance
As artificial intelligence (AI) applications become more prevalent, having infrastructure that supports their intensive demands is vital. VMware vSAN 8 ESA on Intel’s Fourth Generation Xeon Processors excels in this area:
- Image Classification: ESG’s tests using the ResNet-50 benchmark showed that AI image classification tasks ran up to 9 times faster with Intel AMX technology on the new processors. This performance boost enables quicker data processing and more efficient AI model training and inference.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): Similarly, NLP workloads using the BERT-Large model saw substantial improvements. The combination of VMware vSAN 8 ESA and Intel’s processors delivered up to 5 times higher performance with minimal accuracy loss, facilitating faster and more reliable AI-driven insights.
Conclusion
For enterprises aiming to elevate their IT performance and scalability, the detailed findings of the ESG Technical Validation report provide compelling reasons to consider adopting VMware vSAN 8 with Intel’s latest processors. Download the full report to explore how VMware and Intel can elevate your IT operations and drive your business success.
