GreenBytes Selected by University of Maryland

GreenBytes, Inc. announced that University of Maryland’s AREC Department, an academic unit
specializing in the economics of agricultural, environmental and natural
resources, selected GreenBytes to upgrade their virtual storage environment and
provide the IOPS required for their
evolving storage infrastructure.

The University was provided with
enterprise-scale storage features and performance, enabling them to reduce
latency, provision and deduplicate a growing number of virtual desktop images,
and save space with storage server consolidation.

As the AREC Department at the University of Maryland
(UMD) added more virtual desktops to their network, latency issues were
becoming a problem. UMD needed a storage solution with features such as compression and deduplication that also included
sufficient performance (IOPS) to be used in a diverse environment with server
and desktop virtualization, as well as users performing I/O intensive
statistical calculations on the same storage subsystem.

"When we started looking into a new storage solution,
we knew that we needed enterprise-scale features like deduplication and
compression, but also a solution that could be easily expandable, easy to
manage, and would give us the biggest bang for our buck," said Jeff
Cunningham, Director of Information Systems, University of Maryland, AREC Dept.
"With larger and larger data sets, our storage needs were growing
exponentially, and we needed a far more efficient and better performing
solution."

UMD deployed a GreenBytes GB-2000 SSD
accelerated inline deduplicating SAN and NAS appliance with 12 TB of RAW
storage, SSD for read/write cache, a pool of ten striped and mirrored disks and
two hot spares. In a competitive marketplace, UMD decided to purchase
the GreenBytes GB-2000 as it offered a Hybrid Storage Architecture (HSA)
that combined higher performance via the SSD read and write cache, with less
costly SATA drives.

"I did consider other alternatives, but the
price/performance and expandability of the GB-2000 made it stand out," said
Cunningham. "The GB-2000 has provided the IOPS that our dynamic storage
infrastructure was demanding, and the latency issues I was seeing prior to
implementing the GB-2000 have been resolved."

UMD was provided with the enterprise-scale storage features
and performance that they were looking for, enabling them to provision and
deduplicate a growing number of virtual desktop images, saving
storage space while adding additional efficiencies.

"I was previously using two iSCSI SANS primarily
for my server and desktop virtual machines and user data; all of those
functions have now been consolidated onto the one GB-2000 that is easier to
manage," said Cunningham. "The GB-2000 has provided me with an
affordable, easy to manage, high-performance iSCSI SAN with high-end features
that accommodates a diverse computing environment."