Pillar Said its Axiom Outperforms Systems From EMC and NetApp

Pillar Data Systems announced the results of an independent Demartek lab test that compared disk drive rebuild times among some leading disk storage systems. The study showed the Pillar Axiom 500 performed the fastest drive rebuilds – up to 71-percent faster – with minimal impact to application performance, when compared to competitors EMC (EMC CX3-40) and Network Appliance (NetApp FAS3050c.)

The main focus of this test was to measure the impact to applications during drive rebuilds, and the rebuild times of the three storage systems under various I/O load conditions. The results of the study established that the Pillar Axiom delivers better application performance and uptime during drive failures than the tested systems from EMC and NetApp. In fact, the Pillar Axiom outperformed the competing systems in every category of the test.

The report states, “Demartek’s general findings were that the Pillar Axiom 500 performed the fastest drive rebuilds of the three systems tested, using 500-GB SATA disk drives. These test results were a bit unusual in that normally one product does not perform the best in every category.”

“Pillar Data Systems’ drive rebuild-time results come from an innovative design using multiple controllers per disk shelf,” said Dennis Martin, President of Demartek. “Anybody concerned about disk drive rebuild times should take a hard look at the Pillar Axiom system.”

Test Configuration and Overall Findings
In order to conduct the test between the three companies, Demartek mandated that each storage system contained four disk shelves populated with 500-GB SATA disk drives and configured into RAID-5 disk groups (RAID-4 for NetApp) of each six drive, leaving a few open drives for hot spares.

The Demartek report noted that the Pillar Axiom system was up to 30 percent faster than EMC CX3-40 and 26 percent faster than the NetApp FAS3050c in terms of drive rebuild on idle LUNs. Additionally, it was 60 percent and 71 percent faster than EMC and NetApp, respectively, on busy LUNs.

In addition to increased reliability, other highlights of the study include:

• Pillar had higher performance during all tests;
• Pillar’s performance was only slightly impacted during rebuilds; EMC and NetApp saw dramatic performance decreases; and
• Compared to EMC and NetApp, Pillar had lower drive rebuild times for all scenarios tested.

“Customers are looking for the best ways to optimize their application performance and uptime – and many are looking for alternatives to some of the more entrenched companies like EMC and NetApp,” said Nancy Holleran, President and Chief Operating Officer, Pillar Data Systems. “This study validates that drive rebuild time is an important factor in determining how a storage system ensures optimal availability and performance to business critical applications. Pillar again has proven that its Axiom 500 system is architecturally superior to legacy systems from its competitors.”

Designed from the ground up as the only true Application-Aware Storage system, the Pillar Axiom allows users to match multiple application characteristics to the appropriate service levels within a single storage platform. The Pillar Axiom cuts administrative time and total cost of ownership by more than 50 percent as well as provides the only storage system that can differentiate services based on application priority.

Pillar Data Systems

Demartek