xkoto GRIDSCALE

Release: xkoto GRIDSCALE 5.1

July 15, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Xkoto today announced it is previewing the new release of GRIDSCALE 5.1, the latest edition of itsactive/active solution for mission-critical databases. General availability of the product is expected in Q3, 2009.

Currently in beta testing, GRIDSCALE 5.1 adds several features that improve the performance and compatibility of the industry’s first shared-nothing solution for commercial databases. Two key GRIDSCALE features in this release are native Microsoft SQL Server support and a new Cluster Lock Manager.

GRIDSCALE 5.1 features a new “driverless” configuration mode for SQL Server environments, eliminating the need to reconfigure database drivers. Implementing Microsoft SQL Server’s native communication protocol, GRIDSCALE delivers several benefits, including compatibility with most native SQL clients such as ADO, .NET, OLE DB, and others. Plus, IT professionals can now use GRIDSCALE to simultaneously manage multiple SQL Servers using existing, popular tools such as SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

GRIDSCALE’s patent-pending Cluster Lock Manager is an industry first, enabling reliable scaling of transaction-intensive workloads across independent database servers. Traditionally, relational databases have relied on distributed lock management solutions to coordinate transaction locking across disparate database servers.

These approaches have significant drawbacks, such as risk of a single point of failure, poor performance due to synchronous behavior, and significant management overhead. GRIDSCALE’s new Cluster Lock Manager operates completely transparent to an application to isolate and coordinate row-level transactions across database servers. As a result, applications can scale reliably across the pool of database servers managed by GRIDSCALE.

xkoto Debuts GRIDSCALE for Microsoft SQL Server

October 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

xkoto, the database virtualization company, today announced GRIDSCALE for Microsoft SQL Server, a product that improves application performance, scalability and reliability in SQL Server environments.

GRIDSCALE for Microsoft SQL Server is an active-active solution that virtualizes the database infrastructure. It enables businesses to distribute application loads horizontally across multiple instances of SQL Server, resulting in better reliability and performance than that of more costly and complex legacy clustering solutions. With GRIDSCALE for SQL Server, businesses can eliminate planned and unplanned outages, rapidly scale application load across SQL Servers, and implement cost-effective disaster recovery solutions.

With GRIDSCALE, database administrators can perform hardware upgrades and software updates without having an impact on system performance or uptime. Plus, GRIDSCALE eliminates the limitations of clustering configurations, such as shared storage, partitioning and mirroring.

xkoto underwent performance and functional testing of GRIDSCALE for SQL Server in one of Microsoft’s technology centers. Results showed near-linear scalability for read-intensive workloads, such as those used for online commerce applications. GRIDSCALE also received high marks on availability tests, which simulated hardware failures, network outages and site-wide disaster.

Unlike traditional clustering, which relies on multiple databases tied to shared storage, GRIDSCALE employs a shared-nothing architecture with a dynamic number of database servers for continuous availability. Each database server operates completely independent of the others, maintaining its own complete and consistent copy of the database. The GRIDSCALE server appears as a single, fully functional database to all applications, which are unaware that any one of several database servers may be used to fulfill their requests.

GRIDSCALE for SQL Server initially supports ODBC, JDBC, and .NET connectivity. In addition to its support for SQL Server, xkoto added functionality for DB2 in the latest version 4.1 version of GRIDSCALE.

xkoto

xkoto Presents New Management Team

April 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Xkoto, a provider of data virtualization solutions that ensure availability and scalability for mission-critical data and applications, today announced it has strengthened its executive management team.

Joining xkoto are John Hamilton (Senior Vice President of Sales and Services), Dermot O’Grady (Chief Financial Officer) and Charlie Ungashick (Vice President of Marketing).

“The management team we have assembled puts us in excellent position to take a major share of the data virtualization market,” said David Patrick, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are now geared up to build on the vision of our co-founders, Albert Lee, Ariff Kassam and Jeff Heisz, who identified the need for a product that would dramatically improve application availability by virtualizing the database infrastructure.”

Prior to joining xkoto, John Hamilton was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Trigence, an application virtualization software company. Dermot O’Grady joins xkoto from Convoq, where as CFO he was instrumental in raising $23 million in venture capital, according to the press release.

Finally, Charlie Ungashick joined xkoto from Deltek, where he was Vice President of Field and Product Marketing and a “key contributor to its successful IPO”.

CEO David Patrick said the team is ramping sales of xkoto’s GRIDSCALE software platform.