Company doubles aggregate performance, introduces new options for high performance applications and enterprise consolidation

BlueArc Corporation, a market leader in scalable, high-performance network storage, today announced the introduction of new enhancements to the company’s Titan 2000 line of network storage systems, including expanded clustering capabilities through four nodes with near-linear scalability, a new Titan blade module for Windows server consolidations, and dynamic multi-node read caching capabilities. The introductions extend BlueArc’s diversified performance leadership, further positioning the company’s Titan 2000 family as the ultimate network storage solution for enabling enterprise consolidation, application acceleration and simplified management.
"One of the most compelling things about BlueArc that doesn't get discussed often enough is how versatile their storage system is," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "The Titan provides excellent performance for transactional, streaming, small files, large files, Unix, Linux and Windows environments. This recent announcement bolsters this strength even further providing up to 4 nodes in a cluster for extended performance scalability, smarter caching algorithms and accelerated CIFS performance, which many other NAS players do a poor to mediocre job with."

Today’s announcements include:

Expanded Clustering Capabilities with Near-Linear Scalability:

Customers can now scale their BlueArc Titan 2000 clusters to four nodes, with near-linear scalability, offering more than 1 million real-world IOPs, based on internal testing and performance at customer sites, with more than 3 Gigabytes per second of aggregate throughput, and a shared common pool of storage, to 512 terabytes in a single namespace, on the heels of being the first major storage vendor to offer a clustered namespace in early 2006. This compares to other competitive solutions which would require dozens of servers to approach Titan’s aggregate performance and capacity. These enhancements further extend BlueArc’s performance, scalability and simplicity leadership, offering customers the ability to optimize capacity utilization, rapidly provision storage and benefit from unparalleled levels of performance from a single point of management. BlueArc now supports up to 32 virtual servers that enable resource partitioning within the Titan, further improving ease of use and data management.

With today’s increased clustering capabilities, Titan 2000 further cements its position as the ideal platform for high-performance computing or large enterprise environments. While other network storage vendors offer an ever-increasing number of devices to manage to meet today’s demanding datacenter requirements, BlueArc continues to lead in scaling modular individual system capacity and performance. The scalability and performance of BlueArc’s Titan enables customers to accomplish more with less, simplifying management and reducing power and cooling costs when compared to other solutions in the market.

“Customers tell us the opportunity to cluster a fraction of the nodes while attaining leading performance and scalability can mean tremendous cost savings for their business, in terms of reduced power and cooling expense, simplified management, and floor space,” said Steve Daheb, vice president of marketing and business development for BlueArc. “Alternative clustered storage solutions on the market require dozens of servers to achieve the real-world performance of a 4-node Titan cluster. Beyond that, customers see significant cluster overhead, upwards of 35%, with other vendors, meaning every fourth node in a cluster is wasted, contrasted with Titan’s near-linear scalability. There is a better way to scale out storage, and that’s with the fastest, most scalable device available on the market.”

Dynamic Read Caching:

For customers and applications that need shared accessibility and scalable performance in a common data set, BlueArc is introducing an optional licensed feature delivering dynamic read caching for frequently used data across a multi-node Titan cluster. Dynamic read caching transparently distributes and caches frequently-accessed data across the Titan cluster, aggregating performance, providing faster access for customers, eliminating bottlenecks, and accelerating application performance. For entertainment customers working on shared scene files, Internet services customers offering popular downloads, and enterprise customers with large databases, dynamic read caching will accelerate access dramatically.

The new option features intelligent policies that automatically distribute read-only data sets based on historical client and application access patterns. In addition, BlueArc provides the ability to automate or manually administer the feature. Unlike traditional storage caching solutions, which require additional hardware, BlueArc’s dynamic read caching solution is integrated into the Titan server.

New Titan Blade Module for Windows Consolidation:

The challenges of today’s enterprise datacenters are compounded by the need for IT managers in all industries to consolidate Windows-based clients and servers while growing capacity and performance. Today, BlueArc introduces a new Titan blade module optimized for Windows consolidation, specifically designed for demanding CIFS-based protocol workloads common to Windows environments, increasing the company’s already industry-leading CIFS performance by up to 250 percent, supporting hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections, to anticipate and stay ahead of increasing customer demands.

The introduction of the new protocol acceleration module extends BlueArc’s history of offering customers modular, bladed upgrades as new technologies enter the market or to meet growing customer demands, enabling significant feature upgrades without costly data migration or forklift field replacement. The new blade module reduces latency and application response times, and sets the foundation for the acceleration of other stateful protocols, including NFSv4.

“Data growth across all markets continues at an unrelenting pace, and IT leaders need storage technology that supports their need to dramatically increase the performance and efficiency of their mission critical business applications, regardless of their type,” Daheb added. “The new clustering capabilities, dynamic read caching and blade module for Windows consolidation directly address these customer needs, extending BlueArc's performance diversity. By scaling linearly and supporting up to four nodes in a cluster, the Titan offers an industry leading platform for consolidation and server virtualization with leading power and flexibility.”

With today’s announcements, BlueArc furthers the company’s Titan platform beyond leading application performance, delivering leading TCO, so customers can accomplish more tasks with fewer devices, as part of a simplified storage infrastructure. The combined offering meets growing data demands from customers in the company’s rapidly-expanding customer base across vertical markets and the enterprise.

www.bluearc.com