DataCore Aces Test

DataCore Software Corp. is hoping to win a little more respect with the release of benchmark test results that show its Windows-based storage virtualization software absolutely smokin' -- delivering higher I/O throughput than much more expensive storage arrays.

DataCore's SANsymphony software not only delivered the highest I/O numbers to date on the industry-standard Storage Performance Council benchmark, but did it with a much lower price tag than other vendors. The company's software, running on three Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL) servers, delivered top throughput of 50,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) on the SPC-1 benchmark, using a configuration with a total price of about $310,000 (see DataCore Touts SPC Test).

According to DataCore, the results show that its software handily outperforms pricier storage systems from Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), LSI Logic Storage Systems Inc., 3PARdata Inc., and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), which have released SPC-1 benchmark results (see Sun Guns Midtier Box, 3PAR Claims Benchmark Title, HP Fiddles With Cache, and LSI Screams Past IBM, Sun).

The company isn't necessarily trying to compete head-to-head with storage array vendors -- rather, it wants to use the SPC-1 results to demonstrate that it's not a bottleneck in the SAN.

"We're in the area of consolidating and automating storage, so people want to know, 'Hey, if you put DataCore in this role, what's the impact?' " says Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing at DataCore. "As this test shows, the impact is: We turbo-charge performance... The information is absolutely compelling and there's no way to argue against it."Well, we're pretty sure someone will quibble with the results. The members of the SPC include all the major storage systems vendors -- with the conspicuous absence of EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), which insists the benchmark doesn't reflect real-world performance characteristics. Industry analysts, meanwhile, speculate that EMC's systems simply don't perform well on the SPC-1 benchmark.

In any case, DataCore's showing on the SPC benchmark provide concrete evidence that the product delivers on the company's claims, says Mike Karp, senior analyst at consulting firm Enterprise Management Associates. "It shows they're right up there with the rest of the vendors who can enhance storage throughput," he says.

DataCore points out that its configuration delivered a price/performance ratio far better than almost every other vendor that has released SPC-1 test results. The table below shows the price of the tested configuration divided by the IOPS; DataCore is bested on this metric only by Dell's low-end SCSI RAID system.

Table 1: SPC Price/Performance Comparison

"Our software takes advantage of the latest processor technology in the commercial space," says Gonzalez. "Custom-built storage devices are forced to use older components."DataCore ran its software on three dual-processor Dell servers -- two with 3GHz processors and the other with 2.8GHz processors -- running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. The servers were connected to 220 Seagate Technology Inc. (NYSE: STX) 18-Gbyte 15,000-RPM Fibre Channel drives housed in a JMR Electronics JBOD (just a bunch of disks) enclosure.

The SAN components included QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC) host bus adapters, two 16-port QLogic switches, and a 24-port McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) Sphereon 4500 switch.

The full results of DataCore's SPC-1 benchmark test are available here.

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch