Enterprise Reviews

September 17th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien

JetStor SAS 616iSD 10G iSCSI SAN Review

The SAS 616iSD 10G is part of an extensive line of block-level storage arrays offered by JetStor. The iSCSI 616iSD offers up to 48TB of storage via 16 3.5" bays in a 3U enclosure. JetStor features dual redundant active/active RAID controllers and four 10GbE ports, two per controller. Each controller is powered by an Intel IOP342 64-bit Chevelon dual-core storage processor, and includes features like parity-assist ASIC, iSCSI-assist engine and TCP Offload Engine (TOE). Should 48TB prove insufficient, the 616iSD can be expanded with four JBOD shelves (SAS716J) for a maximum capacity of 240TB per array.

September 12th, 2012 by Josh Linden

Mellanox SX6036 56Gb InfiniBand Switch Review

The Mellanox SX6036 is the second Mellanox managed switch to join the rack in the StorgeReview Enterprise Lab. The SX6036 is designed for top-of-rack leaf connectivity, building clusters, and carrying converged LAN and SAN traffic. The integrated InfiniBand Subnet Manager can support an InfiniBand fabric of up to 648 nodes. While we've found 1GbE, 10GbE and 40GbE to be compelling interconnects in the lab, there are times when you just need a little more power to ensure that storage is the throughput and latency bottleneck, not the network fabric. To this end we are leveraging the InfiniBand switch and related gear on high end storage arrays and situations where there's not just a need for speed, speed is a requirement for doing business.

September 4th, 2012 by Josh Linden

Mellanox SX1036 10/40Gb Ethernet Switch Review

The Mellanox SX1036 is a 1U managed Ethernet switch that provides up to 2.88Tb/s of non-blocking throughput via 36 40Gb/s QSFP ports that can be broken out to achieve up to 64 10Gb/s ports or offer a mixture of 40Gb/s and 10Gb/s connectivity. As a backbone to the StorageReview Enterprise Lab networking infrastructure, the SX1036 switch provides the connectivity required to test the latest Ethernet-based high-speed network storage appliances. On the compute side, we’re pairing the SX1036 with Mellanox’s dual-port 10GbE and 40GbE ConnectX-3 EN PCIe 3.0 Ethernet adapters and connecting with Mellanox QSFP and SFP+ cables, giving our lab a complete end-to-end Mellanox interconnect solution.

September 1st, 2012 by Kevin OBrien

Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 Review

The Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 represents a calculated entry into the server market: an affordable server with specifications that support database applications and virtualized infrastructure. The RD630 was announced earlier this year as part of an initiative to expand the ThinkServer brand into enterprise cloud and virtualization deployments. It is a scalable 2U rack server solution featuring hardware RAID and eight to sixteen 2.5-inch hot-swap SAS or SATA drives. Powering the ThinkServer is the Intel Xeon E5-2600 processor family with the Intel C602 Chipset. New products like the RD630 are positioning Lenovo to take on other OEMs like Dell and HP that already operate in the enterprise server market.

August 24th, 2012 by Josh Linden

Eaton Advanced Monitored ePDU Review (eAM001)

Eaton’s Advanced Monitored family of ePDUs are designed to allow administrators to remotely monitor the power usage of individual outlets or sections over the network. Out-of-the-box web monitoring is built into the ePDU, and SNMP allows integration with third-party management systems. The eAM001 Advanced Monitored ePDU brings 20 C13 outlets and 4 C19 outlets to the StorageReview Enterprise Test Lab with outlet-level monitoring over the network. The eAM001 allows a maximum draw of 5.8kW, providing plenty of power to servers, storage and networking equipment in our 42U Eaton S-Series Rack.

August 17th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien

LSI Nytro WarpDrive WLP4-200 Enterprise PCIe Review

The LSI Nytro WarpDrive WLP4-200 represents LSI's second-generation effort in the enterprise PCIe application acceleration space. LSI builds on an extensive history of enterprise storage products with the newly rebranded line of acceleration products dubbed LSI Nytro. The Nytro family includes the PCIe WarpDrive of course, but also encompasses LSI's Nytro XD caching and Nytro MegaRAID products that leverage intelligent caching with on-board flash for acceleration, offering customers an entire suite of options as they evaluate high-performance storage. The Nytro WarpDrive comes in a variety of configurations, including both eMLC and SLC versions, with capacities ranging from 200GB up to 1.6TB.

July 30th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien

HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 Server Review

As StorageReview expands our enterprise test lab, we're finding a greater need for additional latest generation servers (like the HP D380p Gen8); not just from a storage perspective, but from a more global enterprise environment simulation perspective as well. As we test larger arrays and faster interconnects, we need platforms like the HP DL380p to be able to deliver the workload payload required to these arrays and related equipment. Additionally, as PCIe storage matures, the latest application accelerators rely on third-generation PCIe for maximum throughput. Lastly, there's a compatibility element we're adding to enterprise testing, ensuring we can provide results across a variety of compute platforms. To that end HP has sent us their eighth-generation (Gen8) DL380p ProLiant, a mainstream 2U server that we're using in-lab for a variety of testing scenarios.

July 23rd, 2012 by Kevin OBrien

Drobo B1200i Review

If we know anything about Drobo and the new B1200i, their mission statement is to keep storage simple. The 12-bay SAN has historically supported up to 48TB of storage via SATA and SAS hard drives via Drobo's BeyondRAID automatic and instantaneous drive management system. Now the B1200i has a new trick up its sleeve, automated data-aware tiering. Maintaining the simplicity mantra, the B1200i can support a trio of SSDs to deliver automatic data tiering, while preserving the other nine bays for large capacity storage, all with plug-and-play simplicity.

July 16th, 2012 by Kevin OBrien

Fusion-io ioDrive Duo Enterprise PCIe Review

As part of StorageReview's continued advancements in both testing protocol and enterprise lab development, we're taking a renewed look at first generation flash drives that we have previously reviewed. These re-reviews of early PCIe flash storage devices gave us the opportunity to refine and re-calibrate our enterprise review process before rolling out new reviews of second generation PCIe storage cards and application accelerators. We have been going through our revised testing methodology over the last several months with first and second-generation cards supplied from industry leaders as we hone in on testing protocols that are more relevant to the enterprise storage buyer. In this review, we're again working with the 640GB Fusion ioDrive Duo - this time using more sophisticated tests across both Windows and Linux.

July 10th, 2012 by Josh Linden

NETGEAR ProSafe GSM7352S 48-Port Switch Review

The Netgear GSM7352S 48-port switch is among the latest additions to StorageReview’s burgeoning enterprise testing environment. The GSM7352S offers much-needed room for growth in the test lab, and enables our staff to broaden the range of network topologies we can create while evaluating new storage gear. The GSM7352S offers 48 10/100/1000 Mbps ports, along with two built-in 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ interfaces on the front and two optional 10 Gigabit module bays on the rear for uplinks and stacking. The GSM7352S also supports IPv4/IPv6 dynamic routing protocols including OSPF, VRRP and multicast, along with VLAN routing and a removable power module which can fall back on external RPS power in the event of a power supply failure.