Storage Blade: Astute Networks Unveils Industry's First 10Gb iSCSI AdvancedTCA (ATCA) Storage Blade
Astute Networks, a leader in the development of high performance networked storage solutions for mission-critical applications, recently introduced the industry's first 10Gb iSCSI AdvancedTCA (ATCA) storage blade. Setting new performance and density standards for networked storage solutions, the Caspian ATCA storage blade‘s pioneering design offers up to 100K I/Os per second, 400 MB/sec of high performance throughput, and high density storage at RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 10. Designed to overcome the critical hurdles to the deployment of ATCA servers in Mobile Switching Centers (MSCs) and Central Offices (COs), the Caspian ATCA storage blade reduces the storage footprint, while reducing overall acquisition costs, deployment complexities, and management workloads for ATCA-based telecom systems. This results in dramatically improved revenue per rack and lower operating costs while offering the benefit of the migration from rack mount servers to blades for the telecoms and NEPs.
"Achieving success in today's demanding markets is all about providing solutions that combine innovation and execution to solve real world customer problems," stated Clark Masters, recently announced president and CEO of Astute Networks. "With today's announcement of our award-winning Caspian ATCA storage blade, we are introducing a product that offers the telecom carriers and NEPs an order of magnitude increase in iSCSI performance with carrier grade reliability at reduced operating costs. I've been involved in bringing many high-impact, innovative products to market, and Caspian will be one of the best ever. An order of magnitude performance increase matters," stated Masters.
"Telecom carriers face a number of critical business issues as they deploy new services such as 3G/4G, IPTV, and IMS to the Central Office (CO) and Mobile Switching Center (MSC) environment," said Mike Heumann, vice president of sales and marketing, Astute Networks. "The pressure to deploy these new capabilities is further complicated by the need to reduce the cost per subscriber, which requires the carriers and NEPs to lower acquisition, deployment, and operating costs. Only a new approach to storage connectivity, specifically the deployment of 10Gb iSCSI ATCA storage blades, can help deliver all that. Our Caspian blade, which is optimized for the needs of the telecom business, is designed to do exactly that."
The iSCSI Caspian ATCA storage blade delivers the performance of Fibre Channel rack-mount storage with the density and deployment advantages of ATCA. Dramatic revenue increases per telecom frame are realized by reducing the footprint of external storage in ATCA systems, allowing a net increase in server blades per frame. In addition, equipment acquisition and deployment costs are significantly reduced by eliminating expensive HBAs and cables required to connect to external storage. Finally, storage management tasks are streamlined since Caspian is an integrated ATCA solution that provides simple and consolidated SNMP management for all setup, configuration, monitoring, and repair requirements.
"The Astute Networks' Caspian ATCA storage blade revolutionizes the storage paradigm for ATCA systems by enabling network equipment providers with the ability to offer fully integrated server/storage solutions within a single ATCA chassis," said Jeff Hudgins, vice president of Engineering and Product Development, Alliance Systems. "The ability to add just the right amount of storage for a given application without incurring the space penalty or over-provisioning typically necessary with rack-mount storage allows us to develop solutions that are optimized for our customers' needs. This not only reduces the total acquisition cost of ATCA storage, but also minimizes the logistics required to install storage systems in the field," stated Mr. Hudgins.
Caspian sets a higher bar for carrier grade reliability in iSCSI ATCA implementations. Designed to leverage the advanced performance and high availability features of the ATCA option 9 chassis, Caspian brings together full 10Gb iSCSI offload, four hot-swappable enterprise SAS drives, and a high performance RAID controller onto a single ATCA storage blade. This combination of functionality and density is made possible by Astute Networks' Athens storage processor; the first 10Gb TCP/IP and iSCSI offload ASIC developed specifically for target Telecom applications. With the addition of a 2-drive Rear Transition Module (RTM), Caspian offers up to 900 GBytes of storage in a single ATCA slot.
About Astute Networks
Astute Networks develops industry-leading, high performance networked storage solutions for mission-critical applications. Founded in April 2000 and headquartered in San Diego, Calif., Astute Networks is backed by venture capital firms including Tallwood Venture Capital, Sevin Rosen Funds, Scale Venture Partners, KeyNote Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners. Additional information is available at www.astutenetworks.com.
SOURCE: Astute Networks