Cloudhelix delivers superior hosted enterprise application performance

Cloudhelix, a cloud hosting, ISP and consultancy services provider based in the UK, has deployed PernixData FVP software to improve application performance in its multi-tenant hosting environment. With FVP storage acceleration software, Cloudhelix has optimised the performance of all virtualised applications in a cost effective and efficient manner, enabling the company to best meet existing client needs while growing its hosting business with confidence.

Cloudhelix has been experiencing growing interest from clients to move business critical applications into their cloud environment. This has resulted in increased I/O demands on the company’s storage infrastructure. During a recent IT build out, the company wanted to take measures to ensure this increased load would not adversely impact application performance.

Despite considering a range of solutions, including upgrading their storage to all flash arrays, Cloudhelix ultimately decided to deploy PernixData FVP software with Intel SSDs in conjunction with the company’s existing Dell EqualLogic SAN. The software was chosen for its simplicity and ability to integrate with existing server and storage hardware infrastructure. In addition, FVP’s unique ability to accelerate read and write traffic with clustered fault tolerance was also an important factor in Cloudhelix’s final decision. Cloudhelix initially deployed FVP in its multi-tenancy clusters and noticed an instant improvement across a range of applications including SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, Exchange, SharePoint and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with client’s immediately reporting accelerated performance.

“We had to find a way to balance the increase in workload with client performance expectations in a scalable and cost-effective manner,” said Angus Malcolm, technical director at Cloudhelix. “As technical director, I need to be confident when speaking with prospective customers that our storage subsystems will meet the demands placed on them. PernixData FVP provides that level of assurance both for me and for our customers, which has already helped us to close a significant new business opportunity and will therefore pay for itself in a matter of months.”

“Like all companies, Cloudhelix wants to deliver high performing virtualised applications in a consistent manner, without wasting money on unnecessary storage hardware,” said Jeff Aaron, vice president marketing, PernixData. “PernixData FVP makes this possible with unprecedented scalability and reliability, making our solution a key infrastructure enabler for hosting and services providers throughout the world.”

PernixData FVP is the premier software platform for scale-out storage acceleration. It virtualises high speed server resources like flash and RAM into a clustered acceleration tier that enables IT administrators to quickly, easily and cost-effectively scale-out storage performance completely independently of storage capacity. The result is unprecedented read and write performance for all virtual machines (VMs), without the need to change existing server and storage infrastructure.