Infortrend Integrates Two SSDs as Cache

Infortrend announced that, according to testing conducted on its EonNAS 5100 unified storage systems, adding two low-latency SSDs (solid state drives) to the server node as read/write cache requires less than 10 percent additional investment – but increases performance by more than 30 percent.

EonNAS systems achieve this performance acceleration by transparently caching frequently-accessed data on SSDs. This technology also provides a cost-efficient alternative to meet performance requirements. Traditionally, users resorted to 15K RPM SAS drives to achieve high performance, and while this approach can meet performance requirements, it comes at a high cost per gigabyte. Test results indicate that, for a lower investment, users can deploy a SATA-based EonNAS storage system enhanced by SSDs to achieve the same high performance as delivered by a SAS-based configuration not enhanced by SSDs. Since each SATA drive provides much larger capacity than a SAS counterpart, the SATA configuration provides 300 percent more available capacity in the same rack space and greatly lowers cost-per-gigabyte by up to 75 percent.

Data today, especially unstructured data, is growing exponentially. Challenged by this rapid expansion, users need storage systems that can flexibly scale to deal with increasing application requirements. In addition to performance scalability through SSD integration, EonNAS systems also provide capacity scalability. By attaching expansion enclosures, users can scale the solution up to 84 hard disk drives. Moreover, stored data is protected by hardware-based RAID and data protection functions, including snapshot and remote replication.

According to James Hsieh, vice president of global marketing at Infortrend, "EonNAS systems are designed to help SMBs deal with diverse and changing data demands without increasing budget and technical staffing. By integrating SSDs as data cache to meet performance requirements, the Infortrend EonNAS 5100 offers a two-pronged cost benefit by making the initial cost more affordable and offering long-term savings too."