U.S. Military Significantly Increases Performance and Throughput in Network-attached Storage Network; Large Volumes of High-speed Streaming Digital Data Stored in Near Real-time

• Industry/Market:
  » Government
  
• Challenge:
  » Cost-effective method required to increase system performance for more efficient handling of large amounts of streaming, infrared flight signature data
  » Offload network traffic from the server CPUs to enable processors to be used for data acquisition
  » Significantly improve data throughput in network-attached storage (NAS) network to enable real-time storage and faster access to streaming data
  
• Solution:
  » Alacritech Gigabit Accelerator
  
• Benefits:
  » CPU utilization dramatically reduced from 70% to 20% to provide 50% more processing power for data acquisition
  » Network throughput increased, and digital data now transported and stored in near real-time
  » Cost effectively increased overall NAS system performance by retaining and enhancing existing technology
  

"We needed a cost-effective NAS solution that could increase our system performance and accelerate network traffic to enable our network to more efficiently handle large amounts of streaming infrared flight signature data. We installed six Alacritech Gigabit Accelerators and did some head-to-head testing against non-accelerated cards. We were extremely pleased to see our CPU utilization rates drop from 70% to 20% to give us 50% more processing power for additional data acquisition. As a budget-conscious government entity, we were thrilled to be able to cost effectively extend our existing machines to add so much additional performance to our NAS network."
    Roger Martinez, Systems Engineer
    Patuxent River Infrared Signature Measurements (PRISM),
    NAVAIR Atlantic Test Range
    United States Navy

Overview:
The United States Navy operates the Atlantic Test Range, which is comprised of several air and land testing and training facilities located along the Eastern seaboard. The Atlantic Test Range provides flight test control and range safety functions and mid-Atlantic area frequency coordinator services, and coordinates the Patuxent River special-use airspace. In addition to radar and optical tracking systems, the Atlantic Test Range operates fixed and mobile systems to provide the necessary capabilities for a wide variety of testing.

The NAVAIR Atlantic Test Range is located in Patuxent River, Maryland and coordinates the Patuxent River special-use airspace. One of its mobile testing systems is the Patuxent River Infrared Signature Measurement (PRISM) system. The PRISM system is housed in a 48-foot semi-trailer. A Kineto Tracking Mount (KTM) situated next to the trailer carries a suite of infrared (IR) sensors including cameras, an interferometer, and a laser rangefinder. The PRISM system is capable of tracking an aircraft in flight and collecting its IR signature in real-time. Its suite of IR sensors generates large volumes of high-speed digital data.

Challenge:
The NAVAIR Atlantic Test Range staff operating the PRISM system use 11 Windows 2000-based computers running in a Gigabit Ethernet local area network (LAN) to process high-speed digital data and store it to a NAS system in close to real-time. Roger Martinez, a systems engineer for the PRISM system, noticed the software used to collect the flight data from the suite of sensors on the Kineto Tracking Mount was using the majority of the available CPU resources. He realized the high volumes of data had the potential of overloading the existing CPUs. Martinez needed to find a way to ensure the CPUs could be relied upon to process and store the data, but he also wanted to offload the CPUs so they could handle additional data acquisition.

"We were using Intel's non-accelerated Gigabit network interface cards (NICs) to store large volumes of data over the network, but we realized they placed a large burden on the CPU of each computer," said Roger Martinez, System Engineer, NAVAIR Atlantic Test Range. "Being a government entity, we have very limited budgets to work within, so we began to search for NAS storage solutions that could really increase our overall system performance, but didn't require purchasing all new equipment."

Alacritech Solution and Benefits:
Sanstor, a reseller based in Virginia Beach, Virginia had learned that the PRISM team was running a Gigabit Ethernet network and was looking for a cost-effective NAS solution to increase system performance, as well as accelerate network throughput to enable the streaming infrared flight signature data to be stored rapidly. Frank Palmieri, president of Sanstor suggested that the Alacritech card performed exceptionally well in streaming data environments.

Alacritech's Gigabit Accelerators use the company's Internet Protocol Processor (IPP) ASIC for protocol processing. The IPP ASIC offloads network protocol processing from the host CPU. Alacritech accelerators are based on SLIC Technology®, which is a patented TCP/IP data-path offload architecture specifically designed to significantly improve host processor efficiency, increase data throughput and reduce network latency.

"We installed six Alacritech Gigabit Accelerators and did some head-to-head testing against our existing non-accelerated cards, said Martinez. "We were extremely pleased to see our CPU utilization drop dramatically from 70% to 20%, which gave us 50% more processing power to use toward data acquisition. As a budget-conscious government entity, we were thrilled to be able to cost effectively extend the use of our existing machines to add so much additional performance to our NAS network."

System Configuration: