As IT costs grow, budgets shrink, and demand soars, there is an immediate need to extend and/or consolidate existing server assets. Many IT departments are currently faced with reduced capital budgets as well as decreased staffing levels for NAS Systems.
Enhancing Windows NAS Systems
Doing More With Less As IT costs grow, budgets shrink, and demand soars, there is an immediate need to extend and/or consolidate existing server assets. Many IT departments are currently faced with reduced capital budgets as well as decreased staffing levels. Considerable financial, staffing, and time investments have already been made in a typical data center including original capital equipment costs, installation, configuration, and ongoing server maintenance and deployment costs. Preserving these investments by extending the useful life of these systems can be critical to the success of many projects. With Windows-based servers handling increasing network traffic, one focus is to find a solution that moves network data as quickly and effectively as possible. Providing mission critical network availability with minimal server resource usage is the ideal. A dual processor Windows Server 2003 system with an Alacritech TNIC provides over double the price/performance of a quad processor The TCP/IP Bottleneck Windows Server 2003 system using a 1 conventional NICFile servers utilize TCP/IP as the underlying transport protocol for client 1 VeriTest results can be found at: www.veritest.com/clients/reports/alacritech communications with file protocols such as NFS and CIFS. These systems spend a significant portion of their resources preparing data for transmission over TCP/IP via Ethernet networks. Well balanced file servers frequently spend half their CPU resources performing network protocol processing. This resource bottleneck makes them prime candidates for upgrade of their network adapter with a TCP Offload Engine (TOE) Network Interface Card (TNIC). The TNIC Solution TNICs provide significant performance boosts and server efficiencies independent of other improvements to the system. Installation of a TNIC allows the greatest number of clients to be served using the existing server. The upgrade is as simple as any other PCI card installation - simply install the hardware and driver - and experience immediate performance improvements including: . Reduced latency . Increased throughput . Reduced CPU utilization Quick, Easy, and Low Risk Optimized file server platforms with TNICs now support more users with the same or even fewer management resources. The quick, easy and low risk installation of a TNIC-based solution avoids tedious, time consuming, and expensive server upgrades and data migrations. SEN2002XF and SEN2002XT Accelerators from Alacritech Alacritech's TNIC Solution The Alacritech Accelerator, the industry's first Windows TOE card, accelerates network data across Ethernet environments with unparalleled levels of performance and efficiency. Integrating an Alacritech Accelerator into a Windows-based server provides the fastest and most effective solution for improving existing network-attached storage (NAS), backup, video and other network applications. Enhancing Windows NAS Systems
Delivering Over Twice the Price / Performance using TNICs Upgrading with an Alacritech Accelerator also prepares the file server to take maximum advantage of Microsoft Windows 1Server 2003. Recent testing commissioned by Alacritech shows a dual processor file server running Windows Server 2003 with an Alacritech SEN2002XT Accelerator and an Alacritech SES2002XT iSCSI Accelerator offers better performance than a quad processor file server running Windows Server 2003 and using standard NIC cards, at less than half the system cost-delivering 121% better price-performance. Alacritech Accelerators extend the scalability of one of the lowest cost storage solutions available - Windows-based file servers. As Alacritech Accelerators support industry network standards for failover and link aggregation, additional performance benefits can be achieved such as: . Added reliability . Increased availability . Improved scalability Reduced Data Center Costs "We've gained the huge By implementing Alacritech Accelerators into existing servers and achieving performance increase performance gains equal to more expensive servers, it is also possible to reduce the total cost of ownership by: and systems efficiency we required ." . Consolidating servers and maintenance fees Andrew Yashchuk . Lowering power and facilities r... [download for more]
