Memory Virtualization With a Twist
A new virtualization company opens its doors
today, and is offering something I haven't seen before in the virtualization
world: memory virtualization.
Wait a minute! you shout. Memory
has been virtualized for a long time. VMware's ESX does it; so does Microsoft's
Hyper-V, Citrix' XenServer, Virtual Iron and everyone else. They all
pool server RAM and make it available to virtual machines (VMs) on an
as-needed basis.
That's what I told
RNA networks Marketing VP Andy Mallinger
in a briefing last week. But RNA is doing something different: specifically,
its Memory Virtualization Platform (MVP) and first product,
RNAmessenger, isn't designed to work in a virtualized
environment. It's for very high-end servers that normally wouldn't
be virtualized due to their workloads.
RNAmessenger works in
basically the same way as the other guys. It pools memory, but in this case
makes it available only for physical servers that need it. The company is
claiming perforance improvements of 500 percent and even more in initial use
cases with financial companies that rely heavily on electronic trading. The
first company using it is a gigantic hedge fund that RNA would not identify by
name. Mallinger did imply, however, that the company is beyond happy with the
product.
A performance improvement of 500 percent plus? Those are heady
numbers, to be sure, but RNA has promised to provide me with customers who will
verify the figures. Be assured that I will follow up, as those numbers
are amazing if true. It claims to do this through reducing latency and
increasing throughput.
Right now, RNAmessenger is for use on
various flavors of Linux, including Red Hat, Fedora and SUSE, and is
x86-based. It requires the MVP hardware appliance and
the RNA messenger software.
As a company, RNA looks as if
it's started off on the right foot. It's received
$7
million in Series A funding, a significant amount of
start-up capital in this economic environment. It's got a strong leadership
team, and a product that fills a niche I hadn't even considered before, but
makes perfect sense.
RNAmessenger is available starting today. If
you become a customer, please
let me
know about your experiences.
Posted by Keith Ward on 02/02/2009 at 12:48 PM