Solutions

By performing an advanced form of TCP Offload, the Alacritech^® line of Scalable Network Accelerators™ is able to provide the highest possible performance for all IP data and storage networks. From data storage to the server, all the way through to the client desktop, only Alacritech Accelerators provide the highest level of throughput and scale the network to support more clients.

Unleash your network

Modern IT departments are faced with many challenges. Not only are clients using the network to send an ever increasing volume of more types of data, but the size of the data they are sending is growing larger as well. With increasing demands to send voice, video, email, shared files and numerous other bandwidth intensive applications, it is growing increasingly difficult to maintain the performance that users demand.

Now as storage and networking technologies are merging, networks are being tasked with moving more data to more clients at an ever increasing rate. Network administrators are responsible not only for the network, but server storage as well. This means they must master not only the storage technologies, but also the storage interconnect technologies as well as balancing the new demands being placed on the network.

Alacritech’s industry leading, patented technology has been designed to specifically solve these problems. The Dynamic TCP Offload technology pioneered by Alacritech relieves the host processor of the burden of network processing by taking the processing of network data off of the CPU and placing it onto hardware specifically designed for the task. The server is then free to perform the tasks it was designed to do, instead of wasting cycles processing network traffic. This means the server can scale to support more clients, run more applications, and move data faster than ever before, all while using the network infrastructure already in place to support a high speed storage network.

Networks and Server Sprawl

Today’s networks are under increasing pressure to handle greater and greater amounts of traffic. As more and more users demand access to multiple applications, such as Exchange, databases, and file sharing, even the most powerful servers can be overwhelmed. As user demand exceeds server capacity additional servers are being deployed to handle the load, however this solution actually provides a whole new set of problems. Additional servers are expensive. While the initial cost of the hardware may not seem that great, it’s not just the cost of the new server hardware. Server software licensing can often exceed the cost of the server itself. Then there are the other costs, such as storage for the server, power and cooling, installation, backup and maintenance and everything else that additional server will require. All of this combines to make additional servers a very expensive proposition.

Now there is a better choice. Alacritech Scalable Network Accelerators remove the burden of network processing from the host server and places it on specialized hardware specifically designed for the job. This frees the host CPU to run the applications it was meant to. Since the CPU is freed from the burden of network processing, the server will be able to scale to serve more clients, run more applications, and have a much longer, usable life.

Storage Challenges

Data storage is one of the most challenging aspects of any IT department. The traditional method of directly attaching storage to the server has proven to be too limiting for all but the smallest of organizations. Between the growth in the total amount of storage, backup requirements, and archival regulations, DAS is simply not a tenable solution. Moving to a networked storage model often makes the most sense. Networked Storage allows organizations to share storage across servers resulting in much higher storage utilization, simplified management, and decreased costs.

Organizations are generally faced with two networked storage models to choose from: Networked Attached Storage (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN). NAS have evolved greatly over time, but generally consists of a file server platform modified for storage. Generally, the NAS front-end, or standard networking side, will serve files to connected clients. On the back-end, or storage facing side, the NAS “server” or controller will interface with storage either directly attached or networked, and will move data at the block-level to and from disk. Increasingly, NAS solutions are capable of supporting front-end block-level storage traffic, in addition to file traffic.

Storage Area Networks, or SANs, are simply a dedicated network, interconnecting servers and storage, using block-level storage transport, such as iSCSI or Fibre Channel. A SAN is different than NAS in that it doesn’t support file transfers across its network. A SAN may incorporate a NAS device on its network, as a target, when incorporated to support the transfer of block-level storage traffic.

For both SANs and often the back-end to NAS, customers are faced with the choice between Fibre Channel and iSCSI. Fibre Channel has long been the choice of large enterprises for mission critical data. It has offered the ultra high performance and availability these customers expect but is also very expensive and complex. It often takes dedicated people to administer a Fibre Chanel implementation. iSCSI on the other hand, takes full advantage of standard Ethernet networking equipment and tools, is very easy to support, and is generally much less expensive. Furthermore, iSCSI makes a great deal of sense for most Microsoft Windows environments offering the performance and manageability that most organizations need and expect.

The decision as to whether to go with NAS or SAN, or some combination of the two, is a choice often influenced by the workloads that organizations are trying to support. Either model can take advantage of iSCSI. Alacritech is prepared to support customers in whichever networked storage model customers choose. Alacritech accelerators support both file and iSCSI block acceleration. Unlike a simple iSCSI HBA, Scalable Network Accelerators from Alacritech can accelerate both file and block based storage traffic to offer a true high performance IP storage solution. Together this enables fewer servers to handle more clients, address more storage, and meet the high demands of today’s computing environment.