Back in January, Microsoft acquired hybrid cloud and storage provider Avere Systems. Since then, it has slowly been integrating this solution into its offerings, now culminating with the general availability of Avere vFXT for high-performance computing workloads.
Released in public preview at the beginning of September - or in late August, Microsoft can't really seem to decide when - Avere vFXT is a filesystem caching solution aimed squarely at high-performance computing (HPC) tasks. Taking the form of a set of Azure VMs located near your HPC cluster, it allows for low-latency caching of data that's closest to a particular workload. Furthermore, due to its use of virtual machines, there's also the element of scalability, which translates into more efficient use of resources. In other words, this is essentially a bridge between the data required for a certain high-compute task and its resources, regardless if the data is located on-premises or in the cloud.
Though it offers quite a bit of flexibility in terms of workload scale, according to the company, this is meant to offer a low-latency caching solution "while you determine your longer-term data management strategy."
More information about Avere vFXT is available at its dedicated portal, as well as in the Azure Marketplace.
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