Multiple workloads, one platform - Pivot3 sets out to simplify things

Pivot3 offers software-defined platforms that aim to improve the economics and simplicity of enterprise data centers.

The organisation recently announced the release of Acuity – a HCI software platform that aims to give IT a simple, automated way to manage multiple workloads.

This is done by the consolidation of multiple mixed-application workloads onto a single infrastructure.

Acuity aims to simplify workload management with Pivot3's fifth-generation policy-based management engine and data services. Pivot3 introduced Acuity as a priority-aware software platform that applies resources to mission-critical applications.

The platform has been programed to optimize the use of NVMe PCIe flash. The company claims that this NVMe PCIe flash works to deliver six times the performance of conventional HCI solutions.

Acuity's features include increased density as well as enabling IT to run two to three times more virtual machines per HCI node, which Pivot3 says will reduce your data center footprint.

Other features include pre-defined performance and user-defined data protection policies,

automatic workload prioritization and real-time multi-tier data placement.

Acuity has a policy scheduler allowing administrators to schedule performance and data protection policy changes based on cyclical business processes that change application requirements.

"Customers have experienced success with hyperconverged systems running single applications such as VDI, and now they are increasingly using the same systems to handle multiple mixed workloads," comments Tim Stammers, senior analyst at 451 Group.

But Stammers says this can create resource contention between applications, and the risk of not meeting performance SLAs.

He says that a solution is to combine Quality of Service (QoS) controls with the efficient use of high performance resources such as NVMe flash.

Stammers continues, "Pivot3's Acuity platform uses NVMe flash alongside policy-based – but sophisticated – QoS controls.

Moreover, Acuity aims to improve efficiency in the data center with its set of data services for enterprise IT. According to Pivot3, one of these services is their erasure coding that delivers up to 82% usable storage capacity.

Ron Nash, CEO of Pivot3, says that Acuity is 'turbocharging' HCI and redefining the new generation of the enterprise data centers.

"Businesses are demanding more out of hyperconvergence, and expect these solutions to effectively manage multiple mission-critical applications.

Nash concludes, "by bringing together breakthrough performance and sophisticated intelligence, we're supporting the transition to the private cloud and software-defined data center in a way that's never been seen before.