SCIENCE

GreenBytes announced that University of Maryland's AREC Department, an academic unit specializing in the economics of agricultural, environmental and natural resources, selected GreenBytes to upgrade their virtual storage environment and provide the IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) required for their evolving storage infrastructure. The University was provided with enterprise-scale storage features and performance, enabling them to reduce latency, provision and deduplicate a growing number of virtual desktop images, and save significant space with storage server consolidation.

As the AREC Department at the University of Maryland (UMD) added more virtual desktops to their network, latency issues were becoming a problem. UMD needed to find an affordable storage solution with advanced features such as compression and deduplication that also included sufficient performance (IOPS) to be used in a diverse environment with server and desktop virtualization, as well as users performing I/O intensive statistical calculations on the same storage subsystem.

"When we started looking into a new storage solution, we knew that we needed enterprise-scale features like deduplication and compression, but also a solution that could be easily expandable, easy to manage, and would give us the biggest bang for our buck," said Jeff Cunningham, Director of Information Systems, University of Maryland, AREC Dept. "With larger and larger data sets, our storage needs were growing exponentially, and we needed a far more efficient and better performing solution."

UMD deployed a GreenBytes GB-2000 high-performance SSD accelerated inline deduplicating SAN and NAS appliance with 12 TB of RAW storage, SSD for read/write cache, a pool of ten striped and mirrored disks and two hot spares. In a highly competitive marketplace, UMD decided to purchase the GreenBytes GB-2000 as it offered a unique Hybrid Storage Architecture (HSA) that combined higher performance via the SSD read and write cache, with less costly SATA drives.

"I did consider other alternatives, but the price/performance and expandability of the GB-2000 made it stand out, said Cunningham. "The GB-2000 has provided the IOPS that our dynamic storage infrastructure was demanding, and the latency issues I was seeing prior to implementing the GB-2000 have been resolved."

UMD was provided with the enterprise-scale storage features and performance that they were looking for, enabling them to provision and deduplicate a growing number of virtual desktop images, saving significant storage space while adding additional efficiencies.

"I was previously using two iSCSI SANS primarily for my server and desktop virtual machines and user data; all of those functions have now been consolidated onto the one GB-2000 that is easier to manage," said Cunningham. "The GB-2000 has provided me with an affordable, easy to manage, high-performance iSCSI SAN with high-end features that accommodates a diverse computing environment."