Storage

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Deduplication and RAM cache are two of the most critical technologies in modern IT infrastructure. Both are designed to improve efficiency and performance, but in storage-centric designs, they often work against each other. Deduplication reduces the amount of data that must be stored and transmitted, while cache accelerates access to frequently used data. The problem is that the way these features are typically implemented causes them to clash.

The effectiveness of cache depends on the location. When cache sits inside the server hosting the VM, it is directly alongside the application and delivers immediate performance benefits. When cache resides in a shared storage system connected over the network, its value is far less meaningful. From the application’s perspective, there is little difference between retrieving a block from the array’s cache and retrieving it from the array’s flash drives—both require a network hop.

Deduplication complicates this further. Before cached data can be sent from the storage system, it must often be rehydrated. This process eliminates much of the performance advantage that cache is supposed to provide.

Infrastructure-wide deduplication changes the deduplication and RAM cache dynamics. By sharing metadata across storage, virtualization, and networking layers, it ensures that deduplication and cache work together rather than in opposition. Cache remains in the right place—next to the VM—while data stays deduplicated until the moment it is consumed. For a deeper explanation of this concept, see the blog What Is Infrastructure-Wide Deduplication.

The Role of RAM Cache Today

RAM cache is one of the most powerful tools available for improving application performance. Because it operates at memory speeds, it delivers far lower latency than even the fastest flash storage. Modern workloads—including databases, analytics platforms, and AI/ML pipelines—depend on cache to meet user and business expectations for responsiveness.

But the effectiveness of cache is determined by its placement. Cache inside the server hosting the VM eliminates unnecessary trips across the network, delivering measurable and consistent benefits.

By contrast, cache located inside a shared storage system provides limited value. Retrieving a block from the storage array’s cache is not much different than retrieving it from the array’s SSD tier—both require a network hop. Worse, storage-centric deduplication forces cached data to be rehydrated before transmission, erasing the supposed advantage of having the block in cache at all.

The result is a gap between what cache should provide and what it actually delivers. As applications grow more cache-dependent, that gap widens, exposing the shortcomings of architectures that treat deduplication and cache as isolated features rather than complementary technologies.

How Storage-Centric Deduplication Undermines RAM Cache

deduplication and RAM cache

All-Flash Array vendors promote deduplication as a space-saving feature of their arrays. In theory, deduplication and RAM cache should complement each other; the smaller the dataset, the more effective the cache. In practice, the opposite occurs.

Deduplicated blocks inside an array must be rehydrated before they can be transmitted across the network to the VM. This means that even when a cache hit occurs, the system spends CPU cycles rebuilding the block before it can leave the array. The benefit of the cache hit is diminished, and the VM receives the data with little to no latency improvement.

From the application’s perspective, this creates an illusion of acceleration. The array may report cache efficiency, but because rehydration is required, the VM experiences almost the same delay it would if the block were read directly from flash. Customers end up buying expensive all-flash arrays with large caches that deliver almost no practical benefit to the workloads they are supposed to accelerate. This problem is explored further in AFA Deduplication vs vSAN, which highlights the compromises of storage-centric deduplication approaches.

This is not just a performance issue—it is a resource issue. Rehydration consumes CPU and memory resources in the storage system, forcing organizations to overprovision those resources just to keep workloads running. The result is higher cost, wasted infrastructure, and inconsistent performance.

Infrastructure-Wide Deduplication: The Metadata Advantage

The key to making deduplication and RAM cache work together is eliminating the need for rehydration until the very last step—when the data is delivered to the VM. This is possible only when deduplication metadata is shared across the entire infrastructure, rather than being locked inside a storage array.

deduplication and RAM cache

With infrastructure-wide deduplication, VergeOS maintains a single, global metadata structure that spans storage, virtualization, and networking. This ensures that data can remain deduplicated as it moves through the system. Blocks do not need to be reassembled or expanded in the storage system before traveling across the network. Instead, they stay in their deduplicated form until consumed by the VM or application.

This shift has a direct impact on cache strategy. Cache no longer needs to sit inside the storage system, where rehydration undermines its value. Instead, cache can be placed where it matters most—in the server, right next to the workload. By maintaining consistent deduplication awareness across all layers, cached blocks remain optimized and deliver real performance benefits without the overhead of premature rehydration.

In practice, this often improves effective cache hit rates by a factor of four to five compared to array-side caching, because server-side cache is no longer wasted storing redundant blocks. Applications see faster response times, more consistently low latency, and higher resource utilization efficiency.

Comparing Storage-Centric vs. Infrastructure-Wide Approaches

Feature / ImpactStorage-Centric Deduplication + CacheInfrastructure-Wide Deduplication + Cache
Cache LocationInside storage array, across networkInside server, next to VM
Rehydration RequirementBefore transmission, even from cacheOnly at VM, at point of use
Effective Cache Hit RateLow, due to redundant blocks + rehydration4–5x higher, dedupe shrinks working set
Latency ImprovementMinimal (network hop and rehydration erases benefit)Significant (direct from RAM cache to VM)
Resource OverheadHigh CPU/RAM in array for rehydrationLower overhead, fewer wasted cycles
Business Value DeliveredEfficiency for the array vendorEfficiency and performance for the business

The Deduplication and RAM cache Takeaway

Deduplication and RAM cache are both essential to modern infrastructure, but in storage-centric designs, they often work at cross purposes. Deduplication reduces storage requirements but forces rehydration, undermining cache. Storage-system caches sit on the far side of the network and provide little practical benefit to the applications that need them most.

Infrastructure-wide deduplication resolves this conflict. By sharing metadata across storage, virtualization, and networking, data remains deduplicated until the VM consumes it. Cache can be located directly in the server, where it accelerates workloads without the penalty of premature rehydration. Instead of competing for resources, deduplication and cache reinforce one another—smaller datasets, higher cache hit rates, and faster, more consistent application performance.

The distinction is clear. Storage deduplication and cache create efficiency for the array. Infrastructure-wide deduplication and cache create efficiency for the business—delivering responsiveness, reducing costs, and scaling with modern workloads like AI, analytics, and VDI that storage-centric models struggle to support. For a broader discussion of why deduplication must evolve, download the white paper Building Infrastructure on Integrated Deduplication.

Filed Under: Storage Tagged With: , ,

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Infrastructure-wide deduplication expands what IT professionals know about deduplication, a storage feature that saves disk space. Arrays deduplicate blocks, backup systems compress datasets, and WAN optimizers reduce transmission overhead. Each system handles deduplication independently, creating islands of efficiency in an already fragmented infrastructure.

Infrastructure-wide deduplication takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of treating deduplication as separate features scattered across various systems, it implements deduplication as a unified capability that spans the entire infrastructure—storage, virtualization, networking, and data protection—under a single, consistent framework.

The Problem with Fragmented Deduplication

Traditional deduplication creates a cycle of inefficiency. Data may start deduplicated in primary storage, expand to full size during backup operations, then deduplicate again in the backup appliance using different algorithms. For disaster recovery, the same data rehydrates before replication, deduplicates for transmission, expands again at the destination, and deduplicates once more on DR storage.

Infrastructure-wide deduplication

This fragmentation forces organizations to deploy 30–50% more CPU and RAM than workloads otherwise require to absorb the overhead of constant rehydration and re-deduplication. WAN circuits carry redundant data streams. Backup windows extend as data repeatedly expands and contracts. IT teams assume they have comprehensive deduplication coverage, but in reality, they are paying a hidden tax across every system boundary.

Understanding these inefficiencies—and the architectural approaches that eliminate them—requires examining how different vendors implement deduplication across their platforms. Our white paper “Building Infrastructure on Integrated Deduplication” provides a detailed analysis of implementation patterns from bolt-on approaches to native integration, plus vendor-specific guidance on Unity, vSAN, Nutanix, Pure, and VergeOS platforms. Get the complete analysis at verge.io/building-infrastructure-on-integrated-deduplication.

How Infrastructure-Wide Deduplication Works

Infrastructure-wide deduplication eliminates these inefficiencies through three key principles:

Native Integration. Rather than bolting deduplication onto existing systems, it’s built into the platform from the earliest lines of code. Deduplication becomes part of the core infrastructure operating system, not a separate process competing for resources.

Unified Metadata. Instead of each system maintaining its own deduplication tables, infrastructure-wide implementations use a single, consistent metadata model. A block deduplicated in New York remains deduplicated when referenced in London or Tokyo. Data never loses its optimized state as it moves between functions or sites.

Cross-Layer Operation. Deduplication runs simultaneously across storage, virtualization, and network layers. When the hypervisor makes deduplication decisions, they directly inform storage operations. Network transfers automatically leverage existing deduplication metadata without redundant processing cycles.

Infrastructure-wide deduplication

This cross-layer integration has practical consequences. For example, when a virtual machine snapshot is taken, the hypervisor references existing deduplicated blocks instead of writing new ones. That reduces both I/O and backup times. Similarly, when replication jobs run, they automatically leverage deduplication tables maintained across the entire infrastructure, eliminating duplicate transfers without additional processing.

The VergeOS Implementation

VergeOS demonstrates this approach through its Infrastructure Operating System. Instead of separate storage, virtualization, and networking products that require integration, VergeOS provides a unified platform where deduplication operates across all infrastructure functions.

When a virtual machine writes data, the hypervisor immediately deduplicates at the source. Storage operations work with the optimized dataset. Network replication transmits unique blocks. Backup operations reference existing deduplicated blocks rather than creating new copies. Recovery uses the same optimized structure, eliminating expansion penalties.

This architectural integration explains why infrastructure-wide deduplication remains rare. Other vendors build platforms around separate components. Retrofitting unified deduplication requires redesigning core architectures rather than adding features—a significant undertaking that few vendors attempt. VergeOS avoids this problem by collapsing the stack into one code base where deduplication is built in, not bolted on. Deduplication becomes a key element in the VergeOS architecture.

Measurable Infrastructure-wide Deduplication Benefits

Infrastructure-wide deduplication delivers improvements that compound across the entire infrastructure:

Performance. By operating on deduplicated datasets from the start, I/O operations decrease by 40–60%. Cache hit rates improve by 2–3x because the working dataset is fundamentally smaller. Applications experience lower latency and higher throughput.

Infrastructure-wide deduplication

Resource Efficiency. Organizations can right-size servers based on actual workload requirements rather than deduplication overhead. Memory utilization improves because duplicate data never enters the cache hierarchy.

WAN Optimization. Only unique blocks traverse the network, reducing replication traffic by 70–90%. Organizations can handle more data on existing circuits or reduce bandwidth costs while maintaining protection levels.

Operational Simplicity. Backup windows shrink by 60–80% because data doesn’t rehydrate during protection operations. Snapshots become instant references to deduplicated blocks. Recovery operations are complete 5–10x faster using the same optimized block structure.

Multi-Site Flexibility. With consistent deduplication across locations, entire data centers can migrate between continents with minimal data transfer. AI training checkpoints that previously required hours to replicate are now completed in minutes.

Use Case Spotlights

VMware Exits. Organizations moving away from VMware face major infrastructure transitions. Infrastructure-wide deduplication offsets migration costs by reducing hardware requirements and enabling faster workload mobility.

AI/ML Pipelines. Training large language models generates terabytes of repetitive checkpoint data. Infrastructure-wide deduplication reduces replication from hours to minutes, enabling faster iteration and lower infrastructure cost.

Disaster Recovery Compliance. Meeting aggressive recovery time objectives (RTOs) requires restoring systems quickly. Infrastructure-wide deduplication cuts recovery times by up to 5–10x, helping organizations meet compliance and business continuity mandates.

Competitive Landscape

Not all deduplication is created equal. Broadly, vendors take one of three approaches:

  • Bolt-On: Deduplication is a separate process layered onto existing systems. It introduces overhead, requires additional metadata, and forces rehydration between steps.
  • Integrated Later: Deduplication was added to the platform after launch. Better than bolt-on, but still scoped to clusters or volumes rather than spanning the entire stack.
  • Array-Native: Vendors like Pure Storage offer always-on deduplication, but it starts once data hits the array. CPU, RAM, and WAN costs remain untouched.
  • Infrastructure-Wide: Platforms like VergeOS embed deduplication across storage, compute, and networking in a unified architecture, eliminating silos and preserving deduplication across the entire lifecycle of the data.

When Infrastructure-wide deduplication Matters

Infrastructure-wide deduplication becomes strategically relevant during periods of infrastructure change. Organizations evaluating VMware alternatives should reconsider their entire technology stack. AI workloads generate massive repetitive datasets that storage-specific deduplication handles poorly. Budget pressures make the 30–50% resource overhead of fragmented approaches increasingly difficult to justify, and fragmented deduplication is a key component of the AFA Tax.

The question for IT leaders isn’t whether deduplication works—it’s where it works and how broadly its benefits extend. Infrastructure-wide deduplication transforms a commodity storage feature into a competitive strategic advantage that improves performance, reduces costs, and enables new operational patterns.

Looking Ahead

As infrastructures evolve toward ultraconverged, AI-ready, and private-cloud designs, deduplication will become more than an efficiency tool. It will serve as a foundation for agility, enabling IT to scale workloads globally, replicate AI datasets instantly, and deliver faster recovery from outages.

Rather than accepting the inefficiencies of fragmented deduplication, organizations can adopt infrastructure-wide approaches that optimize the entire stack. The technology exists, the business case is clear, and the timing—with widespread infrastructure reevaluations underway—is ideal.

Ready to eliminate the deduplication tax?

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Filed Under: Storage Tagged With: , ,

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Storage challenges at distributed sites are inhibiting organizations that want to reduce reliance on the cloud and instead extend workloads into remote offices, retail sites, venues, and edge locations. Storage is the critical obstacle preventing these distributed sites from operating effectively.

IT was promised that all data could be centralized in the cloud, but the lack of independence and the high costs of storing and moving data make that approach impractical. What once lived in a data center or the cloud must now be delivered locally at dozens or hundreds of sites, each with tight limits on space, staff, and budget.

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These environments show varied workload needs: some sites need high-capacity storage for video, others require high performance for real-time tasks, and some demand intensive AI processing. Many sites have a mix of these needs, often with limited IT staff, rack space, and budgets. Balancing cost, performance, capacity, and manageability is essential.

The stakes are high. Availability expectations for remote locations often exceed those for the data center. Many are more than customer-facing—they are customer-touching, directly impacting the customer experience. Protection from hardware failure is essential, as is rapid recovery at another site or the data center in case of disaster.

Balancing Storage Demands at the Site

One of the storage challenges at distributed sites is balancing the performance and capacity needs, which can vary greatly. Some require high-performance storage for real-time tasks like point-of-sale, video analytics, or sensors. Others need high-capacity storage for surveillance videos, medical images, or records. Some sites face both demands. Without proper balance, workloads either stall due to latency or run out of space before meeting retention needs.

IT teams are forced to choose between costly, oversized storage that wastes resources and basic local disks lacking resilience. Direct-attached drives offer decent performance but risk disruptions if a drive or server fails. Hyperconverged solutions reduce risk but are costly and may impact performance. None provides the ideal balance of resilience and affordability.

How VergeOS Helps: VergeOS addresses these challenges by collapsing storage, compute, and networking into a single code base, delivering both performance and capacity in the smallest possible footprint. IT teams can size hardware to each site’s exact needs while still getting enterprise-class data services like global deduplication, snapshots, and replication. This unified approach gives small sites the same capabilities as large ones, without oversized appliances or fragile local disks.

Download our white paper: “A Comprehensive Guide to a VMware Exit for Multi-Site Organizations.“

Remote Site Storage Protection and Recovery Gaps

If performance and capacity are difficult to balance at remote sites, protecting the data stored there is even harder. Skilled IT professionals can get these sites backed up, but it is expensive because of WAN bandwidth requirements and high software costs.

Local snapshot capabilities could fix these issues, but low-end storage appliances often lack such features or require costly upgrades. Direct-attached storage has no snapshot option. Hyperconverged storage offers limited snapshots, which can impact performance. Hardware failures mean restoring from outdated backups, risking data loss or downtime at remote sites.

The recovery challenge is just as severe. Moving large amounts of data back across limited WAN bandwidth can take days. Outages from fiber cuts or local disruptions always occur at the worst possible time—such as in the middle of a long backup job. When the connection is restored, the job must start over, wasting time and leaving data exposed.

Testing disaster recovery across dozens or hundreds of sites is time-consuming and often overlooked. In many cases, the first time recovery procedures are attempted is during a real-life failure—when the pressure is highest and tolerance for mistakes is lowest.

How VergeOS Helps: VergeOS solves these issues by making data protection a built-in function, not an add-on. Instant, immutable snapshots and WAN-efficient replication are integrated into the platform, ensuring consistent recovery options across all sites. Organizations no longer depend on fragile appliance snapshots or expensive backup software. By unifying storage and protection in one system, VergeOS makes recovery faster, more predictable, and resilient even across limited WAN connections.

Remote Storage Operational Fragmentation

Organizations manage diverse storage solutions, which become even more complex at distributed sites. The core data center uses SAN and NAS, while edge and remote offices typically rely on direct-attached storage, hypervisor-based storage, and backup appliances. Each layer has different tools, update cycles, and licensing models.

Storage Challenges at Distributed Sites

The result is operational fragmentation. IT staff must jump between consoles to monitor health, provision capacity, and validate protection. Policies differ by vendor, features behave inconsistently, and vendors update on different schedules. Without a single source of truth, it becomes challenging to determine which sites meet data protection requirements, have adequate recovery points, or are drifting out of alignment.

Another one of the top storage challenges at distributed sites is that storage features which appear similar, may work differently across platforms. Drive failure protection, replication, deduplication, encryption, and snapshots may all exist, but each behaves in its own way depending on the vendor, and they don’t understand each other. Vendor A can’t replicate to Vendor B, and Vendor C can’t leverage deduplication metadata from Vendor D. This inconsistency makes it nearly impossible to apply a single policy or rely on predictable results. These inconsistencies also exacerbate the IT skills gap.

How VergeOS Helps: VergeOS replaces fragmented tools with a unified management plane and consistent features across every site. This eliminates silos and provides a single source of truth for monitoring, reporting, and compliance. It also eliminates inconsistency by applying global inline deduplication across the entire infrastructure—core, ROBO, edge, and venue locations. Deduplication is not siloed per vendor or appliance; identical blocks of data are recognized once, no matter where they originate. This reduces capacity requirements, improves replication efficiency across sites, and ensures all data management policies work consistently everywhere. Just as importantly, this same consistency extends to all features—snapshots, replication, encryption, and drive failure protection—so policies behave uniformly across every site.


The Path Forward: Unified Infrastructure Software

Solving the fragmentation issue requires more than incremental gains; the real challenge is architectural. Sites depend on diverse storage products, increasing complexity and risk. IT must unify infrastructure via a single software platform that offers storage, virtualization, and networking uniformly across multiple locations and supports diverse hardware.

A unified infrastructure platform eliminates storage challenges at distributed sites, such as the sprawl of consoles and feature sets. Replication, snapshots, deduplication, encryption, and drive failure protection all behave the same way whether they are deployed in the core data center, a regional office, or a small remote site. Policies can be defined once and applied everywhere, giving IT predictable outcomes.

This approach creates a single source of truth. Monitoring, reporting, and compliance data come from one system, giving IT visibility across the entire environment instead of forcing them to reconcile information from multiple consoles. With unified telemetry, trends are easier to spot, issues easier to diagnose, and compliance more straightforward to prove.

Operationally, benefits are immediate. IT teams spend less time managing incompatible tools and more on delivering value. Features work equally well at small and large sites—small sites get advanced capabilities without oversized appliances, and the core maintains resiliency without siloed complexity. Licensing and support are streamlined, avoiding duplication and waste from fragmentation.

Storage Challenges at Distributed Sites

Unified infrastructure software removes inconsistency, not choice. Teams can make per-site decisions on hardware, but standardizing the software layer across sites creates a resilient, easy-to-manage, scalable foundation. Architectural simplicity is essential for sustainable distributed infrastructure.

How VergeOS Helps: VergeOS delivers this architectural simplicity today via its ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) design, which consolidates storage, virtualization, and networking into one tightly integrated code base. This ensures consistent features, policies, and management across every site—edge, ROBO, venue, and core—providing a unified foundation that scales without multiplying complexity.

Conclusion

Distributed sites are essential to modern operations, but traditional storage models were never built for environments with limited space, staff, and budgets. The result is a recurring cycle of over-provisioning, fragile local infrastructure, and operational silos that add cost and risk with every new site.

The solution to overcoming the storage challenges at distributed sites lies not in more point products but in a unified architectural approach. By consolidating storage, compute, networking, and data protection into one code base, VergeOS removes fragmentation and delivers consistent capabilities across every location. The result is simpler management, stronger resiliency, and predictable scalability.

Organizations that adopt this model can treat distributed sites as first-class citizens of the enterprise infrastructure—resilient, efficient, and prepared for the future.

Click here to learn more about VergeIO’s distributed sites solution.

Filed Under: Edge Computing Tagged With: , ,

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Advanced Data Resilience

An advanced data resilience strategy is crucial when evaluating alternatives to VMware. As organizations begin their research, they encounter many hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions. However, legitimate HCI performance and resilience concerns arise, leading many to hesitate about leaving familiar All-Flash Arrays (AFAs) and traditional three-tier architectures.

The VergeOS white paper, “Solving the HCI High-Performance Problem,” addresses these performance issues. This article focuses on advanced data resilience, detailing how VergeOS resolves common HCI resiliency limitations, enabling organizations to confidently transition away from traditional architectures and AFAs.

Executive Summary – Advanced Data Resilience

VergeOS provides a sophisticated and comprehensive advanced data resilience architecture designed to outperform traditional All-Flash Array (AFA) and Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions. Its multi-layered design includes synchronous replication, High Availability (HA) clustering, ioGuardian fault tolerance, and ioClone snapshot technology, ensuring continuous operations and superior resilience even during severe hardware failures. This technical brief details how VergeOS’s integrated solutions deliver exceptional reliability, backed by compelling real-world use cases and measurable customer outcomes.

Attend our upcoming webinar, How to Replace Your AFA, where we will cover all aspects of VMware and AFA replacement, including migration, performance, and data resiliency.

Advanced Data Resilience Foundation: Drive Protection

Architecture Overview

VergeOS implements synchronous replication to ensure immediate redundancy of data across all cluster nodes. Write operations are confirmed only after successfully synchronizing with all replicas, maintaining strict data consistency and preventing data loss, a significant advancement over traditional RAID systems. This replication occurs in real-time and utilizes global inline deduplication, minimizing storage overhead and network bandwidth requirements. Unlike traditional RAID controllers and external arrays, VergeOS’s replication mechanism efficiently mirrors only unique data segments, enhancing performance and simplifying storage management.

Operational Mechanics of Advanced Data Resilience

When a drive failure occurs, virtual machines (VMs) continue running without interruption on their original hosts. VergeOS employs advanced network protocols that transparently retrieve mirrored data from healthy cluster nodes, ensuring uninterrupted operations without performance degradation.

Advanced Data Resilience: Continuity

Failover Architecture

VergeOS’s HA clustering ensures that complete server node failures do not lead to service interruptions. In the event of a full node outage, affected virtual machines automatically migrate to healthy cluster nodes. This migration leverages already synchronized data replicas, ensuring immediate data availability and continuous service operation.

Advanced Data Resilience AND Rapid Recovery

Rigorous production environment testing demonstrates VergeOS’s capability to recover from a full server node failure within approximately 90 seconds, including a complete VM restart. Rapid recovery is achievable due to pre-existing data mirrors and streamlined failover mechanisms, outperforming traditional SAN and AFA systems, which typically experience longer downtime periods.

Intelligent Resource Orchestration

HA clustering in VergeOS features intelligent orchestration that selects the optimal target host based on current resource availability. This automated and dynamic resource allocation prevents contention, maintains high performance levels, and guarantees consistent service delivery during and after failover events.

Advanced Data Resilience: N+X Protection

Superior Multi-Fault Protection

ioGuardian technology sets VergeOS apart by maintaining continuous data access even when experiencing simultaneous failures across multiple drives and nodes. This advanced fault-tolerant mechanism surpasses the redundancy provided by traditional AFAs and competitive hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platforms, ensuring superior reliability in catastrophic failure scenarios.

Continuous Operation in Extreme Scenarios Delivers Advanced Data Resilience

ioGuardian ensures continuous VM operation even during severe hardware failures. It creates an independent, third copy of data stored on a separate VergeOS server(s), external to the primary production environment. When the production environment experiences multiple simultaneous node or drive failures, the ioGuardian server provides data fragments to instantly reconstruct any required data in real-time. This capability enables uninterrupted VM access, eliminating downtime or noticeable degradation during extreme failure conditions.

Technical Implementation

The ioGuardian architecture includes an external VergeOS instance that stores an independent third-party data replica. Advanced algorithms within the primary VergeOS environment dynamically leverage this external copy. As long as at least one node remains active in the production cluster, ioGuardian reconstructs and delivers necessary data fragments instantly and transparently. This design ensures continuous VM availability and operational integrity, exceeding the fault tolerance capabilities of traditional AFAs or HCI solutions.

Advanced Data Resilience: Recovery

Storage-Layer Snapshots

VergeOS’s ioClone technology provides instant snapshot capabilities directly at the storage layer without impacting the performance of running applications. Unlike traditional snapshot approaches that rely on incremental data chains or external backup systems, ioClone provides immediate, independent, and reliable recovery points.

Space-Efficient Retention

Global inline deduplication enables ioClone to store snapshots efficiently, using minimal storage resources. This efficiency allows organizations to maintain unlimited snapshots over extended periods, addressing the retention challenges and storage constraints commonly associated with traditional snapshot technologies.

Granular and Rapid Recovery

ioClone facilitates recovery at multiple granular levels—individual files, full virtual machines, or entire Virtual Data Centers (VDCs). Recovery operations complete in seconds, dramatically enhancing operational agility and ensuring compliance with rigorous data protection and recovery requirements.

Advanced Data Resilience: Networking

Eliminating Data Locality Limitations

VergeOS uses an optimized internode networking protocol designed to accelerate data transfer between cluster nodes. Unlike traditional architectures dependent on data locality, VergeOS retrieves data across nodes rapidly and efficiently. VergeOS’s deduplication engine, as it is available to the entire infrastructure, reduces network traffic by 60-80%, thereby lowering bandwidth demands and maintaining optimal performance even during fault conditions. The combination of the network protocol and data efficiency is critical in high-performance and data-intensive environments.

Accelerating Synchronous Replication and ioGuardian

The optimized networking protocol powers VergeOS’s synchronous replication and ioGuardian technologies. Synchronous replication instantly mirrors data, thanks to fast communication between nodes. Similarly, ioGuardian leverages rapid cross-node data retrieval to reconstruct data fragments instantly, providing continuous access during severe failure scenarios.

Technical Advantages

The efficiency of VergeOS internode communication results in sub-millisecond latency during cross-node data access. Extensive testing demonstrates consistent performance that exceeds that of traditional SAN or HCI solutions. This capability enhances system responsiveness, reliability, and advanced data resilience, allowing IT teams to confidently eliminate data locality constraints from infrastructure design.

Conclusion

VergeOS’s integrated, multi-layered, advanced data resilience approach delivers superior data protection, operational resilience, and infrastructure simplification. By combining synchronous replication, High Availability clustering, ioGuardian fault tolerance, and ioClone snapshot capabilities, organizations can confidently transition from traditional AFA solutions, avoiding the AFA tax, to VergeOS. For a deeper dive into these topics, register for our “Data Availability Analysis” white paper.

Filed Under: Storage Tagged With: , , , ,

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The VergeIO + Solidigm AFA Replacement Kit is designed for IT teams looking for an AFA Alternative that doesn’t compromise on performance or data resiliency. It combines your existing servers with VergeOS and Solidigm’s NVMe SSDs to create a powerful, server-based storage fabric. The result is a simpler, faster, and more cost-effective solution than traditional SANs and hyperconverged stacks.

The Value of an AFA Alternative

The AFA Replacement Kit is available through VergeIO authorized resellers. It includes VergeOS and Solidigm SSDs packaged together to deliver better value than purchasing each component independently. More importantly, it’s designed to remove the guesswork from SAN replacement projects by providing the right software and hardware combination.

VergeOS—a unified platform for virtualization, storage, AI, and networking — is licensed per server. That means no variable pricing based on features, storage capacity, cores, or the number of virtual machines. The pricing model is easy to understand, easy to forecast, and built to scale.

An AFA Alternative with a VMware Exit

Many organizations considering an all-flash array refresh are also rethinking their hypervisor strategy. The Broadcom acquisition of VMware has disrupted licensing models, partner relationships, and confidence in the long-term roadmap. For IT teams planning a storage upgrade, this presents an opportunity to address two problems simultaneously.

The VergeIO + Solidigm AFA Replacement Kit offers a clear path to exit both the SAN and VMware platforms. VergeOS replaces the hypervisor, SAN, and backup layers with a single software-defined environment. There is no need to manage new licensing agreements, convert workloads to different file formats, or purchase additional software for storage functionality.

Organizations can shift away from VMware while upgrading storage at the same time. The combined result is a simplified architecture, predictable cost structure, and more control over future infrastructure decisions. Our customers consistently report a 5X to 10X cost savings.

An AFA Alternative with a VMware Exit

An AFA Alternative With a Unified Architecture

VergeOS eliminates the traditional boundaries between compute, storage, and networking. Each node in the cluster can be assigned to compute, storage, or both. The architecture adapts to the environment, whether it’s a compact edge deployment or a multi-rack data center.

Data is mirrored across nodes at the disk level. There’s no need for RAID controllers, external failover scripts, or layered cluster software. VergeOS handles availability natively, because it’s built into the core of the platform.

The system supports a variety of drive types and endurance levels. Administrators can use Solidigm TLC and QLC drives in the same environment, assign tiers, and migrate VMs between them without interruption. This flexibility enables easy alignment of storage costs with performance requirements.

Deployments scale without reconfiguration. A two-node edge cluster and a 200-node private cloud run on the same software, managed from the same interface. VergeIO’s integrated Site Manager enables the single-pane-of-glass management of hundreds of sites.

An AFA Alternative with Seamless Migration

Every AFA Replacement Kit includes ioMigrate, VergeIO’s built-in tool for moving workloads from VMware environments to VergeOS. The process is straightforward and does not require specialized migration services or complex conversions.

Step 1: Install Solidigm Drives
Install Solidigm NVMe SSDs into existing servers or newly added storage nodes. VergeOS recognizes and provisions the capacity immediately. Storage-dense nodes can be added where needed, and compute nodes or GPU nodes can access that storage across the cluster.

Step 2: Migrate with ioMigrate
ioMigrate uses VMware’s Backup API to extract virtual machines from the existing SAN through VMware. The data is written directly to VergeOS, now running on Solidigm flash. There is no conversion process or downtime during the initial migration. Virtual machines run natively on VergeOS once the data is in place.

Step 3: Final Sync and Cutover
Once workloads are validated on VergeOS, ioMigrate performs a final sync using VMware’s changed block tracking (CBT). CBT ensures that only modified data is transferred. The legacy SAN can then be decommissioned or repurposed for archival or backup use.

An AFA Alternative with Broad Workload Support

VergeOS is designed to run the types of workloads commonly found in data centers. This includes:

  • Windows Server and Linux
  • SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and other databases
  • Domain services like Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP
  • File services and print servers
  • VDI platforms
  • AI and machine learning workloads running on GPU-enabled nodes

While VergeOS is not designed for bare-metal workloads, many organizations find that applications previously run on physical servers perform better once virtualized within VergeOS. The platform’s tight integration and high-performance storage eliminate many of the bottlenecks that previously limited virtualized performance.

An AFA Alternative: Built-In Data Protection

VergeOS includes a complete set of tools for availability, data protection, and disaster recovery—built into the platform, not bolted on afterward.

ioClone enables space-efficient snapshots at the virtual machine or disk level. Clones are created instantly and can be used for rollback, backup, or testing. There is no penalty for frequent snapshots.

An AFA Alternative with built in data protection

ioGuardian manages real-time data availability. When a node or drive fails, it triggers immediate failover using mirrored data from healthy nodes. If failures exceed mirror protection—such as multiple simultaneous node or drive failures—ioGuardian maintains availability using distributed object awareness. This capability exceeds what three- or four-way mirroring systems can typically recover from.

Virtual Data Centers (VDCs) enable administrators to logically and securely segment environments. VDCs contain their own compute, storage, and networking configurations, making them ideal for multi-tenant environments, departmental isolation, or testing and development.

ioReplicate enables asynchronous replication between VergeOS clusters. Replication can be scheduled, targeted by VM or VDC, and used for point-in-time recovery or to test failover without interrupting production.

Unified is Better Than HCI

Companies like Nutanix offer hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) as an alternative to AFA, but these platforms layer storage on top of an existing hypervisor as a separate virtual machine. This “stack” adds overhead and complexity—and leaves customers managing multiple control planes.

VergeOS does not create a stack; it flattens it. The hypervisor, storage system, and data protection services are all part of a single codebase. That means better performance, easier upgrades, and fewer moving parts.

An AFA Alternative that is efficient and performs as well as a dedicated AFA

To learn more about how VergeOS compares to other HCI architectures, watch our on-demand webinar “Comparing vSAN Alternatives.”

Ideal Use Cases for the AFA Replacement Kit

The AFA Replacement Kit fits best in organizations that:

  • Are replacing aging SAN infrastructure
  • Want to reduce cost (by 10X) without reducing availability
  • Are planning a VMware exit and need storage continuity
  • Want to simplify management and reduce dependency on multiple vendors
  • Prefer to extend the life of existing hardware instead of investing in new appliances

Not Another Storage Silo

This program is not a hardware launch. VergeIO is not entering the storage array market. The AFA Replacement Kit is designed to help customers utilize existing or off-the-shelf servers, eliminating the need for an external SAN without requiring the replacement of another standalone product.

There are no controllers, no shared chassis, and no fixed hardware configurations. Customers build the environment they need, using the servers they own.

Summary: A Purpose-Built Replacement

The VergeIO + Solidigm AFA Replacement Kit is a comprehensive AFA replacement that uses your existing servers to deliver enhanced control, improved performance, and a VMware exit, all while offering lower costs, with fewer hardware components and fewer moving parts.

It works because it’s built from the ground up to do what the modern data center requires—and nothing it doesn’t.

Filed Under: Storage Tagged With: , ,

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 22nd, 2025

VergeIO and Solidigm Introduce “The AFA Replacement Kit” to Eliminate the Complexity and Cost of Dedicated Flash Arrays

ANN ARBOR, MI — July 22, 2025 —  VergeIO, the VMware alternative and pioneer in ultraconverged infrastructure, and Solidigm, a leader in enterprise data storage, today announced the launch of The AFA Replacement Kit—an offering designed to replace traditional all-flash arrays with a simpler, more cost-effective infrastructure solution.

The AFA Replacement Kit brings together three (3) Solidigm™ 4TB enterprise SSDs and a VergeOS server license combined into one streamlined platform. Along with your servers, it’s a complete, ready-to-run infrastructure solution designed to deliver performance, resiliency, and simplicity.

“Customers are tired of bloated hardware stacks and complex licensing schemes,” said Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO. “This kit gives them everything they need to run high-performance workloads—without the operational baggage.”

The AFA Replacement Kit offers IT a turnkey alternative to aging all-flash infrastructure, reducing costs, simplifying operations, and enhancing performance through software-defined efficiency. All IT needs to do is insert the included flash drives into empty drive bays in existing servers, and they’re ready to deploy VergeOS.

VergeIO customers have reported reducing storage costs by a factor of ten, in addition to the added savings from eliminating expensive VMware licensing and support agreements.

“We simply inserted the drives into our existing servers, and VergeOS picked them up immediately,” said Brian Bazzell, Director of IT at the City of St. Peters, Missouri. “It now handles all of our production data and guarantees performance for our critical workloads while protecting it automatically. We saved tens of thousands of dollars by using this approach instead of refreshing our Nimble array.”

“VergeIO’s software platform unlocks the full potential of Solidigm enterprise SSDs,” said Greg Matson, Senior Vice President, Head of Products and Marketing at Solidigm. “Together, we deliver performance and efficiency that legacy architectures can’t match. We’re focused on pushing the boundaries of storage technology to help customers optimize across modern compute workloads, including today’s hyperconverged infrastructure demands.”

As part of the campaign launch, VergeIO and Solidigm will host a joint webinar on July 31, 2025, 1:00PM ET titled “How to Replace Your AFA—While Improving Performance and Slashing Costs,” featuring a live demonstration and migration strategies. Click here to register: https://www.verge.io/webinar-how-to-replace-your-afa/

About VergeIO
VergeIO is the leading VMware alternative, delivering a unified platform that converges virtualization, storage, networking, AI, and backup into a single software-defined solution. Learn more at verge.io.

About Solidigm
Solidigm, a pioneer in enterprise data storage, leverages decades of product leadership and technical innovation to help customers propel into the data-centric future with a robust end-to-end product portfolio for core data centers to the edge. Explore www.solidigm.com.

Media Contact:
Judy Smith
JPR Communications
[email protected]

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: ,