Altera, the leader in programmable logic solutions, recognizes the need for high-performance storage. As the company grew and expanded its storage needs, Altera sought a solution that could transparently back up client data without impacting network availability, and selected BlueArc's Si7500 SiliconServer.
Altera found that utilizing Direct Attached Storage (DAS) was unreliable and demand easily exceeded available capacity, impacting network performance. As server utilization increased, so did calls to customer se rvice and support asking to work around the inherent limitations in the server architecture.
Altera first learned about BlueArc due to its innovative use of Altera's programmable semiconductors, called field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Altera chose to evaluate the performance of currently available storage solutions, and was ultimately impressed by BlueArc's use of FPGAs to address limitations in the storage server market.
All data processing functions in the SiliconServer Architecture™ are handled by Altera FPGAs, allowing for faster processing and reduced data-path bottlenecks typically associated with network operating systems and traditional central processing architectures. Using several FPGAs to handle data control and processing allows BlueArc to accelerate throughput, managing data processing functions in parallel.
In addition, the reprogrammable nature of FPGAs allo ws BlueArc to upgrade the hardware and add desired features on the fly, even after servers have been shipped and installed in customers' data centers.
Following a detailed and successful evaluation, Altera selected BlueArc's Si7500 SiliconServer to directly archive its employee data, allowing consolidation of existing storage and reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) associated with the nightly backups, maintenance and support of DAS systems.
"User data are backed up nightly to BlueArc, resulting in a significant drop in support and service calls."
"In terms of TCO, we achieved higher system availability, reduced support requirements, and even cut our backup time in half. In addition, we have happier clients."
-- Rosemary Nahrvar,When evaluating potenti al storage vendors, Altera's requirements were simple: A reliable, high-performance data storage system with the capability to scale as the company and its storage needs continued to grow. The logical conclusion was to investigate Network Attached Storage (NAS) due to its simplified ease-of-use and potential to scale with the company's needs.
"Everybody knows about NAS; it's the Holy Grail," said Frank Hannig, Altera's chief information officer. "When BlueArc released its first ge neration architecture, we said 'this has got the promise of the NAS box.' It has the scalability and performance we need."
The decision was made to standardize the company's archival storage on BlueArc's Si7500 SiliconServer and begin the consolidation of existing DAS servers as additional departments began to use BlueArc. Altera estimates that four existing servers have been eliminated from its network in the last year alone, due to the high scalability and continued reliability of the Si7500 SiliconServer.
"We were initially excited about BlueArc's Si7500 server due to its use of Altera FPGAs," said Hannig. "But upon evaluating the various NAS boxes, the Blue Arc solution was clearly the best. We have had it now for more than a year without any failures."
The ability of the Si7500 to scale to hundreds of terabytes while remaining accessible to thousands of concurrent users gave Altera the opportunity to continue expa nding its Si7500 utilization as the company and its storage needs grew. With more than a year of consistently available storage, Altera knows it can trust new projects and data to be reliably and regularly backed up to the Si7500.
Altera now estimates that data from one-quarter of the company's employees are backed up nightly to the Si7500, and expects this number to increase as additional users are migrated to BlueArc in the next few months.
"With all new and existing systems, we review the system architecture requirements and how BlueArc could be best utilized. In most cases, not only could we utilize BlueArc, but in doing so, we were able to reduce our storage deployment cost," Nahrvar said. "The Si7500 has certainly changed the way we architect our system layout in storage deployment and management."
Combined with the superior scalability an d performance of the Si7500 SiliconServer, Altera found BlueArc's Global Services team and integrated support solutions to be responsive and accurate, instilling confidence that their storage would not only be reliable, but backed by a knowledgeable support team. As Altera requested additional features to be built into the system, BlueArc's engineers worked with the company to respond to their requests.
"BlueArc's support has been excellent, and they've been very responsive to our suggestions - implementing upgrades within a very short time frame," Hannig said. "With most NAS vendors, it's not uncommon to have to wait until the next-generation architecture to see suggested enhancements. With BlueArc and Altera FPGAs, changes to the hardware can be implemented in the field, within minutes."