Today we released a version of RainStor that incorporates the XAM software development kit (SDK) to access the underlying storage system. Initially, the reason we began incorporating the XAM SDK into our products was to enable us to support writing and querying data on an EMC Centera device.
Having taken the step to build in the XAM layer we began to realise the benefit of a single interface to write data to and from the storage layer, and began designing our own vendor interface modules (VIMs) to expand the set of storage targets we can support. We can now write to disk, Centera devices and even target cloud storage using these VIMs.
The beauty for us is that it easily enables us to develop, test and support new features across all the platforms in one go, and as soon as other vendors come out with their own VIM, we will be ready to support them with minimal effort. It’s a vision that was laid out by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). Since the performance overhead of reading and writing through the XAM layer is minimal, the benefits it enables us to derive are well worth the time invested to build the new layer in to our software.