Schooner Information Technology Releases Membrain™ 4.0

Superior Software Cache and Data Store Provides Massive Server Consolidation, Optimal Performance and Minimal Downtime in Datacenters

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--()--Schooner Information Technology, Inc., which develops and markets high-availability (HA) high-performance SQL database software for mission-critical applications, today announced the general availability of its 4.0 release of Membrain™: a memcached-compatible software cache and persistent NoSQL key-value store that delivers breakthrough 10x server consolidation to greatly simplify datacenter scale out for capacity and performance. Membrain, which runs on standard x86 servers from Dell, HP, and IBM, is optimized to exploit flash memory and now supports up to one terabyte (TB) per server to accommodate new high-capacity flash drives from Fusion-io, Intel®, LSI Corporation (NYSE: LSI), and other manufacturers.

To scale a software cache or NoSQL data store, enterprises traditionally kept the dataset on each server small enough to fit in the available dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) to achieve good performance. This leads to excessive sharding and poor server utilization as more servers are added for more capacity. This causes serious scaling problems and excessive spending on new hardware and on the power and people to run them. Membrain is a solution designed to address these datacenter challenges, offering a multi-threaded implementation of memcached and leveraging flash to increase server performance, up-time and storage capacity while cutting total cost of ownership (TCO) by more than half.

With Membrain 4.0, Schooner delivers several new features:

  • Increase from 512 GB to 1 TB (1024 GB) in the amount of flash memory supported on each x86 server;
  • Full-featured graphical user interface (GUI) for easier management and monitoring of the Membrain instances;
  • Support for monitoring instances of stock memcached, which are often used in conjunction with flash-optimized Membrain;
  • Upgraded installer;
  • Upgraded remote diagnostics tool;
  • Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 and CentOS 6.2.

“Schooner Membrain leverages a very powerful caching technology based on memcached, making it both scalable and cost-efficient, two things that pair well with our ioMemory,” said Tyler Smith, vice president of strategic alliances at Fusion-io. “Schooner’s clever caching between DRAM and Fusion-io solid state memory delivers DRAM-like performance with the persistence of flash, providing a low-latency solution that accelerates database performance.”

Membrain 4.0 starts with a Schooner implementation of memcached optimized for maximum concurrency, and is extended to support the persistence, synchronous replication, guaranteed consistency, and backup needed for an enterprise-grade data store. This optimized data-access layer is coupled with a Schooner library that tightly integrates and balances the use of all system resources — multiple cores, flash memory, and DRAM — to maximize performance and availability, and minimize cost.

“Schooner has deep and unique expertise in exploiting modern flash memory and multi-core processors on standard servers to eliminate the traditional bottlenecks in memcached and NoSQL data stores,” said Jerry Rudisin, chief executive officer for Schooner Information Technology. “The painful sharding needed with MongoDB, Couchbase, and traditional memcached stems from their need to keep all of the data in DRAM and their inability to exploit flash memory. Using Membrain instead of these DRAM-based solutions will deliver better performance and vastly superior economics.”

Schooner will host a live a webinar in collaboration with Fusion-io to discuss Schooner Membrain 4.0, and how pairing it with Fusion ioMemory results in DRAM-like performance with the persistence of flash, providing a low-latency solution that accelerates database performance, reduces painful sharding, and drives business value through increased server utilization.

For viewers, this live webinar will be a rare opportunity to participate in an open dialogue on new benchmarks and best practices of how to get low-latency performance with Schooner Membrain 4.0 and Fusion ioMemory.

Webinar Details:

Topic: How to Get Lightning-Fast Performance with Membrain 4.0 and Fusion-io
Date: March 22, 2012
Time: 11 a.m. PDT / 2 p.m. EDT
To register, please visit http://info.schoonerinfotech.com/MT3SLFP_REG.html
Engage with the presenters on Twitter at #schoonerinfo and #fusionio

About Schooner Information Technology

Schooner Information Technology delivers cost-effective, enterprise-grade database software that frees customers from the traditional tradeoffs between availability, performance and total cost of ownership (TCO). Schooner’s proven, cost-effective offerings include SchoonerSQL, which is 100% compatible with MySQL for easy adoption, and the complementary Membrain data store and software cache. Based in Sunnyvale, California, Schooner is privately funded and supports a variety of customers across technology, entertainment, financial services and telecommunications industries.

For more information, please visit www.schoonerinfotech.com. Follow us on Twitter @schoonerinfo.

Contacts

Schwartz MSL San Francisco
Liz Nelson, 415-512-0770
schooner@schwartzmsl.com

Contacts

Schwartz MSL San Francisco
Liz Nelson, 415-512-0770
schooner@schwartzmsl.com