Alacritech's TCP Offload Technology Enables Compaq Network Attached Storage to Achieve Industry's Highest Performance
eTesting Labs Test Results Show Next-generation Compaq StorageWorks NAS
Delivers Outstanding NAS Performance
San Jose, Calif., — April 16, 2002 — Alacritech®, Inc., the innovator of network accelerator solutions that enable fast and efficient servers and storage systems, today announced that a new test report from eTesting Labs shows that a next-generation Compaq StorageWorks¹ Network
Attached Storage (NAS) solution equipped with Alacritech's Gigabit Ethernet Server and Storage Accelerators demonstrated "outstanding network throughput performance for a NAS appliance." eTesting Labs used Iometer and NetBench benchmark test tools to achieve the test results that establish Compaq as the network-attached storage performance leader.
Compaq installed Alacritech Gigabit Ethernet Server and Storage Accelerator cards in its prototype next-generation StorageWorks NAS solution. The powerful combination marked outstanding performance results for Windows-based NAS solutions. As measured by eTesting Labs, in the single-node configuration, Iometer tests achieved bandwidth of 2,045 megabits per second (Mbps) average peak throughput with 64 kilobyte transactions and bandwidth of 1,683 Mbps average peak throughput with 8 kilobyte transactions, and NetBench tests showed 1,392 Mbps average peak throughput. In a two-node cluster, the combined Compaq/Alacritech solution achieved 2,620 Mbps average peak throughput in NetBench tests. The clustered NAS generated significantly better response times compared to its single-node NAS counterpart, peaking at only 0.532 milliseconds (ms) with a load of 88 clients. The single-node configuration achieved a peak response time of 0.715 ms with a load of 60 clients.
"Compaq's customers have come to expect the highest levels of performance and reliability from our entire StorageWorks NAS product family," said Mark Nagaitis, Director, Marketing, Network Attached Storage Division, Compaq Enterprise Storage Group. "Alacritech's Gigabit Ethernet Server and Storage Accelerator has helped us push our NAS performance to the highest levels in the industry while still offering our customers the cost of ownership benefits of open standards-based platforms."
"The test results from eTesting Labs reinforce Alacritech's position as the leader in TCP offload and acceleration technology," said Larry Boucher, founder, Chairman and CEO, Alacritech, Inc. "The Iometer and NetBench measurements illustrate the unmatched power of Alacritech's SLIC Technology, the basis for the company's patented TCP offload engine. These results further support the benefits of using open hardware platforms, as opposed to proprietary hardware solutions, to deliver data movement at performance levels never achieved before."
"When we saw the BlueArc numbers a year ago, we never imagined Windows-powered NAS appliances would ever exceed those numbers," said Steve Duplessie, senior analyst, The Enterprise Storage Group. "It's clear that Alacritech's Integrated Storage Network Interface Card is a key technology driving high-performance NAS and iSCSI solutions."
The Compaq StorageWorks NAS Iometer and NetBench results are based on independent tests performed by eTesting Labs, a Ziff Davis Media Inc. company, and a leader in Internet and technology testing. The entire performance report can be found on the eTesting Labs Web site at http://www.etestinglabs.com/main/reports/compaq3_02.pdf.
About Alacritech, Inc.
Alacritech, Inc. was founded by Larry Boucher, creator of the SCSI interface, to deliver upon his vision of eliminating the server bottleneck. Today, Alacritech is the innovator of network accelerator solutions that enable fast and efficient servers and storage systems. Alacritech's complete line of high-performance server and storage accelerators is based on the company's patented SLIC (session-layer interface card) Technology to optimize the performance of servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. SLIC Technology is the first fully compatible and scalable technology to offload network protocol processing, primarily TCP/IP, from software on the host system to silicon on the adapter. Based in San Jose, California, Alacritech is privately held. Alacritech is a member of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and the Storage Networking Association (SNIA) and a founding member of the SNIA IP Storage Forum. For more information about Alacritech and its products, please visit the company's Web site at www.alacritech.com.
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Alacritech, the Alacritech logo, SLIC Technology, and the SLIC Technology logo are registered trademarks of Alacritech, Inc. in the United States. Other marks belong to their respective owners.
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