ESG Lab Validates NexGen Delivers The First Midrange SAN With Storage QoS
NexGen Simplifies Storage QoS with ‘Cruise Control' Performance Management Capabilities
NexGen Storage recently announced the release of an Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Lab Validation Report on the NexGen n5 Storage System's ioControl storage QoS (quality of service) capabilities. Typically available only with multi-million dollar systems, NexGen is the first storage vendor to deliver comprehensive storage QoS in a midrange SAN. The ESG Lab testing validates the advantage of NexGen's unique QoS-based architecture delivering guaranteed performance for mission-critical applications in mixed-workload and virtual server environments.
The ESG Lab test confirmed that the NexGen n5 system maintains consistent storage performance for mission-critical applications during three real-world scenarios that every IT manager experiences:
- Non-critical workload spikes (shown in graphic below)
- RAID rebuild
- Controller failure
Lower priority workloads were applied to the n5 and results showed no noticeable impact to the mission critical applications.
Download the full ESG Lab report here.
"NexGen Storage successfully addresses the challenges of managing shared storage performance with a uniquely-architected solution that enables IT managers to provision performance as easily as capacity and to guarantee performance for business- and mission-critical applications within a shared storage environment," said Brian Garrett, vice president of ESG Lab. "Equally important, NexGen's simple wizard-driven process makes provisioning and managing performance extremely easy. Similar to setting the cruise control for a car: simply choose a policy and set the desired performance speed – and NexGen's ioControl ensures that desired storage I/O performance levels are maintained."
Customers agree, the combination of groundbreaking new capabilities combined with extreme simplicity and efficiency sets NexGen apart.
"NexGen's storage QoS is very easy to setup and operate. It has a very simple user interface that allowed us to easily accomplish our performance objectives without requiring a vendor-trained engineer," said Robert Samples, KC Urology Care, senior systems engineer. "The NexGen n5 has a very small footprint compared with our legacy storage, which chewed up a ton of power, required roughly 15U of rack space and cost a fortune every year in maintenance and support. By comparison, the n5 takes up 3U of space and reduces our power requirements by almost 70 percent."
Additional highlights of the ESG report include:
- Guaranteed performance. ESG Lab confirmed that ioControl delivers predictably fast performance for mission-critical applications during spikes of activity from lower-priority applications, RAID rebuilds, and active-active controller failovers, as shown in the attached graphic.
- Easy performance monitoring. ESG was impressed with the ability of the NexGen management GUI to graphically monitor performance over time. According to ESG, this is a powerful capability that's often not available in a native storage management interface.
- High performance in a very small footprint. NexGen's 3U 32 TB hybrid solid state solution sustained a total system level performance of more than 100,000 random IOPS during ESG Lab testing. By comparison, a traditional modular disk array would need 500 or more disk drives to reach the same level.
"Slow application response times can result in lost sales, lost customer goodwill, lost productivity, lost competitiveness, and increased costs. With more and more companies running entire suites of business applications on a consolidated virtual server infrastructure, mixed-workload scalability with predictable performance is needed now more than ever," added Garrett.
NexGen simplifies storage QoS with ‘cruise control' performance management capabilities. As ESG noted, NexGen's ioControl works a lot like the cruise control feature in a car. When a car's cruise control is set to 65 mph, the car maintains a speed of 65 mph whether it is driving on a steep hill or a flat road. Similarly, ioControl makes real-time decisions with a goal of maintaining a desired level of storage I/O performance. NexGen is uniquely able to shift resources from non-critical to mission-critical applications to ensure performance so businesses never miss a beat – even when their IT systems experience a degraded mode event.
To learn more, attend the "Application Performance on Cruise Control with Storage QoS" live webinar on April 26, 2012 at 12:00 noon ET. Register here(http://learn.nexgenstorage.com/Webinar-April2012-ESG?rsrc=PR).
About NexGen Storage
NexGen Storage allows IT organizations to take control of storage performance so they can virtualize business critical applications with confidence. NexGen is the first shared storage system that provides complete control over performance and the highest virtual machine storage density in the industry. NexGen systems transform how performance is managed with the ability to provision performance just like capacity and to maintain those levels with quality of service (QoS), and service levels. Committed to channel success, NexGen provides reseller partners registered deal protection and rich margins on every opportunity. For more information, visit www.nexgenstorage.com.
SOURCE: NexGen Storage