Reducing NAS Sprawl while Delivering Record Performance
Network-attached storage (NAS) is simple-to-use, file-based storage served over a network where multiple users access and share data. File-based storage represents the fastest growing shared storage model. While NAS has greatly aided the enterprise storage administrator in addressing the challenge of managing and protecting file data, as administrators add more users, more applications, and store more data, they struggle to deliver consistent and affordable performance.
A careful examination of the data being stored by enterprises reveals that despite massive data growth, all data is not created equal. In fact, most of the data being stored is inactive data or data not being accessed. Until recently, administrators treated active and inactive data equally, resorting to simply adding more NAS appliances to keep up with file growth. Now the industry has realized that there are better options. One approach is to utilize a tiered storage model. With this approach, a NAS appliance is equipped with different types of media — with each type of media assigned to data according to its relative importance. For example, SSDs — second to DRAM in relative cost — would be used to store important hot data that requires high performance. Less frequently accessed data might be stored on SATA drives. Alacritech believes that there is more economical and efficient way to deliver data based on its importance, rather than simply buying more storage and adding to network sprawl.
The Alacritech ANX 1500 NFS Throughput Acceleration Appliance is a network storage throughput appliance that provides a dedicated performance layer to your existing NAS infrastructure. Rather than attempting to combine storage capacity with performance, the ANX 1500 increases the speed of data access and aggregate data throughput by working alongside NAS systems without requiring that enterprises replace their existing storage infrastructure or surrender ownership of mission-critical data. And the ANX 1500 achieves the industry’s lowest reported ORT (Overall Response Time) based on the results of the industry standard SPEC® (System Performance Evaluation Cooperative) benchmark for NFS SPECsfs®2008 ORT of .92ms. The ANX 1500 is easy to install and on the first day of use, you’ll see the dramatic difference.
