back to article Avere: Cloud storage needs caching too. Why? Because latency...

Avere has a software-only cloud storage gateway that runs in Amazon's compute cloud (ECC) and feeds its compute instances faster with data from storage clouds or on-premises storage arrays. At first glance, this seems decidedly odd. Why would you need a cloud storage gateway, a thing that relies on data caching locally to …

  1. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Seems like a good idea

    I have no idea how to sort out the cost -- $2.50 an hour of EBS equivalent? -- but the concept sounds, umm, sound.

    I run some NFS at home, and even with the low latency of a gigabit switch (and a 100mbit one at the other end of my place)... large file reads and writes run at wire speed (assuming the disk keeps up); latency is relatively irrelevant. Other types of accesses (small, random accesses, or going through numerous small files), 1ms of latency already makes it significantly slower than local disk, let alone 25, 50, 100, 250ms delays of S3. (I've read S3 to EC2 latency is *typically* like 100-250ms... which honestly is pretty high!)

    Caching? It could be inappropriate if your central (in-S3) data is frequently updated from multiple sites, making sure the cache doesn't return stale data could add most of that latency right back. But otherwise, absolutely, cache the frequently used subset of your S3 data, and your latency problems largely go away.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seems like a good idea

      Storage response times on Azure are much faster than with Amazon S3...and it has full caching functionality built in. Avoids the problem in the first place.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like