High Performance NAS Storage for the Virtual Enterprise
Server virtualization has become mainstream and recognized for reducing costs and increasing business agility. With its benefits proven, enterprises are looking to expand their virtualization investment and move to a fully virtualized data center. The advantages of extending server virtualization are clear, but so are the challenges as the impact of server virtualization are being felt at the storage and networking layers of the data center.
Virtualized servers place large demands on the storage infrastructure. Today’s x86 server technology with 6 or 8 CPU cores, means that potentially 256 processors and their virtual machines will need to access the same storage infrastructure. When you consider that each virtual machine has its own unique application and workload, the storage infrastructure needs to be able to accommodate highly random I/O coming from infinite individual hosts as well as the ability to scale for both capacity and performance as data increases.
Shared storage pools utilizing network attached storage (NAS) technology have been growing in popularity to ensure that hundreds of virtual servers can access the same data efficiently without applications or users experiencing delays in service. BlueArc’s scale-right approach provides a shared storage infrastructure that protects against the unexpected and high performance without fracturing budgets.
- BlueArc delivers high-performance NAS unified storage
- Linear scaling of performance and capacity eliminating bottlenecks
- Only shared storage solution that can scale server and storage separately
- Enables IT to build a shared storage solution tailored to the organization’s needs
- Architecture tuned for intensive, mixed workloads
- Hardware-accelerated architecture provides parallel processing for increased
application throughput - Industry’s highest performance and scalability per node
- Supports NFS and CIFS industry standards
- Scale-out NAS solution
- Unified storage provides high-performance for random workload environments
- Ease of management with single global namespace
- Provides corporate IT with the performance and flexibility for server
virtualization and cloud
VMware Integration
BlueArc JetCenter™ for vSphere seamlessly integrates BlueArc unified NAS storage into VMware vSphere, the industry’s leading virtualization platform. Deployed as a plug-in to the vSphere user interface, JetCenter delivers simple and efficient data protection for virtual environments through a single point of control for space-efficient snapshots utilized for backup and recovery.
JetCenter for vSphere supports:
- Creation of instant, on-demand snapshots
- Policy-based scheduling of snapshots
- Capturing orphan snapshots of deleted virtual machines
- Policy-based retention rules
Click here to learn more about JetCenter for vSphere
Virtual Cloning
A powerful feature of VMware vSphere is the ability to quickly create new virtual servers with the click of a button. As new virtual machines are deployed, a considerable quantity of redundant data is stored in the form of common operating systems and applications that consume storage capacity.
BlueArc JetClone™ provides file-level clones that act as a virtual copy of the original data file without consuming additional storage at the time of creation. For vSphere administrators, JetClone speeds the deployment of 100’s of virtual machines with nearly identical OS images without consuming additional storage capacity.
Click here to learn more about JetClone
Server virtualization has reduced the number of physical servers, but the number of development and production workloads running on the remaining physical servers has continued to increase. As a result, the storage environment needs to service this highly dynamic environment with high-performance while supporting diverse I/O workloads.
BlueArc scale-right architecture provides the IT Director or Storage Administrator with freedom of choice to simultaneously scale storage performance and capacity. The ability to scale for performance and capacity allows management to tailor their organization’s storage environment to meet the specific needs of their business.
Scale-right consists of two elements: hardware acceleration and the ability to decouple the storage from servers. Hardware acceleration is achieved by combining field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with traditional multi-processors to provide parallel processing paths that run at wire speed. This unique architecture eliminates the bottlenecks and contention experienced with traditional NAS storage solutions and provides up to four times faster data throughput.
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Parallel Processing from FPGAs
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Click here for more information on BlueArc’s silicon-based file system.
The BlueArc Mercury storage solution participated in an industry standard benchmark that measures Instruction Operations per Second (IOPs) throughput. The results of this benchmark are graphically shown below.
The results indicate that the BlueArc Mercury 110 generates the best per node performance at the lowest cost per NFS IOP at a ratio of 1:9. For customers this means that BlueArc enables the ability to deliver larger, more robust storage infrastructures with less storage nodes. Less storage nodes translate into a lower total cost of ownership through:
- Less complexity in cabling, software and networking translating into fewer points of failure
- Lower management overhead and support costs
- Reduce floor space and power/cooling requirements
