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Exanet Demonstrates Exceptional Performance Scalability

Exanet Inc, a developer of distributed network-attached storage (NAS) solutions, has once again achieved a record-breaking operations-per-second (OPS) result on the industry-standard SPEC SFS benchmark with its network-attached storage (NAS) solution. This time, 71,185 OPS were reached on a two-node cluster, and 139,061 OPS were reached on a four-node cluster with ORT (operation response time) of 1.21 and 1.13 respectively. As previously reported, the Exanet EX600FC six-node cluster reached a record-breaking 203,182 operations per second (OPS) result with ORT of 1.08. These results demonstrate the exceptional linear performance scalability achievable with Exanet solutions.

"The scalable Exanet SPEC SFS performance results we witnessed are exceptional," said Brian Garrett, Technical Director of ESG Lab. "An entry-level, two-node configuration outperformed dual controller systems from EMC and NetApp in both operations per second and response times. The lowest-tier ExaStore solution outperformed the highest priced NetApp solution."

Traditionally, performance-demanding, mission-critical applications have used storage-area networks (SAN storage) because of the high performance needed for database-oriented applications. Until now, customers who have chosen NAS solutions have sacrificed overall performance for ease of use and easy access to information. With these industry-leading performance achievements, ExaStore combines the benefits of both worlds. ExaStore provides the ease of use and easy access to information provided by a NAS solution with SAN reliability and performance. The ExaStore solution, combining an exceptional feature set, high availability, and industry-leading , high-end performance is available at an affordable price for enterprises, both large and small.

"The flat Overall Response Time (ORT) curve exhibited by the ExaStore system indicates the potential for scalability way beyond a six-node system," added Garrett. "ExaStore reached performance levels normally only seen in expensive and complicated SAN (storage-area network) implementations. With the performance and reliability offered by Exanet, customers now have a viable NAS alternative to consider before committing to a new SAN implementation."

"Because of ExaStore's SAN-NAS combination of benefits, smaller companies with exponentially growing data needs can leverage the same ExaStore NAS features as a large enterprise with thousands of users on a general file system -- high-speed, mission-critical access 24/7, without sacrificing reliability," said Giora Yaron, Exanet chairman and CEO.

Expanding from a two-node to a six-node system demonstrates true linear scalability, with performance increasing as system capacity increases, demonstrating how ExaStore meets the performance demands of enterprise-class deployments with thousands of users, as well as smaller organizations without enterprise-sized levels of data.

ExaStore's industry differentiating values are its ability to serve as centralized storage within a heterogeneous client environment while significantly reducing storage management costs and total cost of ownership because of its exceptional feature set. ExaStore solutions use industry-standard, off-the-shelf hardware, thus reducing hardware acquisition and service costs and protecting customers' hardware investments. ExaStore beats industry competitors on both price and performance, making high-featured, highly reliable storage solutions available to a broader market including large- to medium-sized enterprises. ExaStore's no-single-point-of-failure architecture insures automatic fail-over of any failing system component, delivering a highly reliable system. ExaStore's Grid architecture and single file system ensure that high volumes of data can be accessed via any node almost instantly.

ExaStore storage solutions are available both with fibre channel and SATA disk RAID arrays, allowing customers to build an infinitely expandable storage system, based on Exanet's proprietary Grid storage architecture. ExaStore supports Apple, Windows, UNIX, and Linux client environments using their native file system APIs -- Apple File Protocol (AFP), CIFS and NFS.