Data Analytics Firm ESRG Selects Silicon Mechanics

Silicon Mechanics, Inc. has supplied a unified storage appliance to ESRG, LLC, a data analysis and remote monitoring technology firm that provides real-time equipment analytics to the commercial maritime and defense naval sectors.

ESRG turned to Silicon Mechanics to help manage its growing data sets cost-effectively as increased monitoring capabilities outpaced the company’s storage capacity.

Silicon Mechanics’ zStax StorCore ZFS unified storage appliances feature a scalable, modular design that can support ESRG’s growing SaaS business requirements, guarantee data recovery, and facilitate the company’s development needs.

The zStax software-defined storage platform developed by Silicon Mechanics is based on open-source ZFS and powered by NexentaStor. The software-defined storage model has the flexibility and portability to support ESRG’s development life cycle, and the reliability and replication to support BC.

Steve Scherer, storage solutions expert, Silicon Mechanics, explains that ESRG requires hybrid storage pools and the ability to queue up write operations to avoid bottlenecks.

“High volumes of small-block write I/O can bring many storage systems to their knees, so we used high-endurance Seagate SSDs to handle that write workload,” says Scherer. “Seagate SSDs can also be leveraged for read cache, holding the most frequently accessed portions of the database on solid-state media for extremely fast read access times.”

According to ESRG’s IT manager, John Schleigh, the storage system allows ESRG incredible flexibility and reliability through coupling a wealth of features delivered by ZFS and NexentaStor with well-designed, cost-effective hardware.

He says: “The storage solution allows ESRG to capture state-of-the-art technology at the best price-performance ratio while not discarding any previous investments. The solution can be easily scaled with our budget and performance requirements.”

With this solution, ESRG can also copy its data instantly through the use of snapshots, which can be replicated to other nodes onsite and offsite. Unlike legacy storage systems, zStax ZFS unified storage appliances from Silicon Mechanics provide snapshots at no additional cost, so if there were a failure at one site, data and applications could be brought up at another. As customers are paying closer attention to BC and information practices and policies, this feature has become an advantage.

Silicon Mechanics has been recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in the Greater Seattle Technology Corridor.