Qumulo has added a performance-enhancing NeuralCache predictive caching feature to its Cloud Data Fabric.
The Cloud Data Fabric (CDF) was launched in February and has a central file and object data core repository with coherent caches at the edge. The core is a distributed file and object data storage cluster that runs on most systems, vendors, or public cloud infrastructures. Consistency between the core and edge sites comes from file system awareness, block-level replication, distributed locking, access control authentication, and logging.
NeuralCache uses a set of supervised AI and machine learning models to dynamically optimize read/write caching, with Qumulo saying it’s “delivering unparalleled efficiency and scalability across both cloud and on-premises environments.”
CTO Kiran Bhageshpur states: “The Qumulo NeuralCache redefines how organizations manage and access massive datasets, from dozens of petabytes to exabyte-scale, by adapting in real-time to multi-variate factors such as users, machines, applications, date/time, system state, network state, and cloud conditions.”
NeuralCache, Qumulo says, “continuously tunes itself based on real-time data patterns. Each cache hit or miss refines the model, improving efficiency and performance as more users, machines, and AI agents interact with it.”
It “intelligently stacks and combines object writes, minimizing API charges in public cloud environments while optimizing I/O read/write cycles for on-premises deployments – delivering significant cost savings without compromising durability or latency.”
The NeuralCache software “automatically propagates changed data blocks in response to any write across the Cloud Data Fabric” and “users, machines, and AI agents always access the most current data.”
Bhageshpur says this “enhances application performance and reduces latency while ensuring data consistency, making it a game-changer for industries relying on data-intensive workflows, including AI research, media production, healthcare, pharmaceutical discovery, exploratory geophysics, space and orbital telemetry, national intelligence, and financial services.”
Qumulo says NeuralCache excels at dataset scales from 25 PB to multiple exabytes, “learning and improving as data volume and workload complexity grows.”
This predictive caching software was actually included in the February CDF release, but a Qumulo spokesperson told us it “wasn’t fully live and we were just referring to it generically as ‘Predictive Caching.’ Since then, we have had a customer test it out and provide feedback like a Beta test. And we formally named it NeuralCache.”
Interestingly, high-end storage array provider Infinidat has a caching feature that is similarly named but based on its array controller’s DRAM. Back in June 2020, we wrote that its array software has “data prefetched into a memory cache using a Neural Cache engine with predictive algorithms … The Neural Cache engine monitors which data blocks have been accessed and prefetches adjacent blocks into DRAM.” It enables more than 90 percent of the array data reads to be satisfied from memory instead of from much slower storage drives.
Despite the similarity in naming, however, Qumulo’s NeuralCache tech is distinct from Infinidat’s patented Neural Cache technology
Qumulo’s NeuralCache is available immediately as part of the vendor’s latest software release and is seamlessly integrated into the Qumulo Cloud Data Fabric. Existing customers can upgrade to it with no downtime. Find out more here.
