High-Density and Multi-Service Applications
The storage system delivers industry-leading density of interface modules in an enclosure and a flexible configuration of interface modules and hard disks of different types. This design makes the series suitable for high-density and multi-service applications.
High-Density Virtual Machine Applications
The virtual machine technology greatly improves application servers' utilization, and lowers services' deployment and operating expense. Therefore, it is popular in many application scenarios. However, virtual machines are now facing a challenge, that is, they are equipped with an increasing number of application systems and virtual desktops, leading to the high density of virtual machines. Compared with a single server, high-density virtual machines generate more service data, consume more bandwidth, and pose more demanding requirements on performance and scalability.
Excellent in both performance and compatibility, the storage system is ideal for high-density virtual machine applications:
- The three-level performance acceleration technology provides robust storage performance for high-density virtual machine applications.
- The proprietary Turbo Module technology significantly improves the density of interface modules in a single enclosure. This high-density design translates into a capability to support hundreds of virtual machines.
- Various virtual machine applications are supported, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen.
Figure 3-3 shows an example of the high-density virtual machine application scenario.
Multi-Service Applications
It is common nowadays for one storage system to process diversified applications. However, those applications have differentiated requirements on storage. Therefore, the storage system must have high flexibility in performance and networking.
Each type of services has its specific requirements for storage systems:
- Database servers (featuring unstructured data) have high requirements on storage performance, data integrity, and system stability.
- Mail servers (featuring high randomicity of concurrent accesses) have high requirements on storage performance, data integrity, and system stability.
- Video servers have high requirements on storage capacity, data access continuity, and continuous bandwidths.
- Backup servers have low requirements on performance and bandwidths.
The storage system supports an intermixed configuration of SSDs, SAS disks, and NL-SAS disks to deliver optimal performance.
- SSDs: deliver the highest performance among these three types of disks, and are suitable for application servers such as busy database servers and mail servers that require superior storage performance.
- SAS disks: deliver performance lower than SSDs but higher than NL-SAS disks, and are suitable for application servers such as common database servers, mail servers, and high-definition (HD) video servers that have a moderate storage performance requirement.
- NL-SAS disks: deliver the lowest performance among these three types of disks, and are suitable for application servers such as low-end video servers and backup servers that have a low storage performance requirement.
Multiple front-end interface modules are flexibly configured with customizable transmission rates, adapting to various networks and providing storage services in different networks.
Figure 3-4 shows an example of multi-service application scenario.
