Kontron and Astute Networks Achieved 68K Read IO/s

Kontron AG, a provider of embedded and open modular solutions, and Astute Networks, Inc., provider of bladed storage solutions optimized for the most demanding applications on the edge of the network, announced new industry-setting read/write I/O benchmark results that have a profound ‘bottom-line’ significance for telecom and network equipment providers (TEMs/NEPs) in the IPTV and Video on Demand (VoD) market segments.

Integrated within the Kontron OM9020, a 2U, two-slot AdvancedTCA platform, both the Astute Networks Caspian R1100 Edge Storage Blade (Caspian R1100) and the Kontron AT8030 AdvancedTCA Intel based 10GbE node server were lab-tested to achieve an I/O performance of 68K read I/Os per second configured with 375 MB per second read, and 62K write I/Os per second configured with 360 MB per second write using large-block transfers. In comparison, a standard dual processor AdvancedTCA server can only attain 15K I/Os per second at 80 MB per second. Conversely, the Kontron AT8030 AdvancedTCA 10GbE server node is designed with three Intel Core2 Duo processors, each of which is an independent diskless server with its own dedicated memory.

The combined Kontron and Astute Networks solution provides iSCSI over 10GbE support and 1.5 TB of RAID 5 protected storage, capable of sharing 300 standard-definition movies across a large number of subscribers (using 300 GB SAS drives, available in late 2008). Even more interesting to TEMs and NEPs is that this two-bladed platform offering can easily scale up to a redundant 14-slot AdvancedTCA platform that supports 1,800 movies within 9 TB of storage deployable for central office (CO) environments. Any similar proprietary configuration would require nearly three times the space and power.

Migrating proprietary hardware designs to a commercial off-the-shelf platform such as AdvancedTCA offers several price/performance benefits such as reduced cabling, more efficient management, space optimization, balanced processor performance and a fast mesh interconnect between blades for exceptional I/O performance. The Kontron and Astute Networks AdvancedTCA platform enables telecom equipment providers and their service provider clients to mass deploy next-generation media services much more cost effectively and with a much improved time to market than typically achieved with proprietary solutions.

“Equipment provider customers are demanding the ability to mix-and-match the best hardware and software solutions, and support multiple operating systems simultaneously for their next-generation media system applications,” said Sven Freudenfeld, telecom business development director at Kontron. “The significance is we offer an easy path to grow and upgrade their solutions over time without requiring forklift upgrades or complex service calls. The result is a solution that improves time to market and lowers total cost of ownership.”

“Specifically for IPTV-related content delivery applications, most are designed on proprietary hardware and storage systems,” said Fazil Osman, chief technology officer and co-founder at Astute Networks. “The proprietary approach is expensive and limits the ability to use ‘best-in-breed’ hardware and software solutions. The result is that carriers cannot achieve quick time to market, low acquisition costs, low total cost of ownership and best-of-breed performance and features simultaneously. Rather, they are forced to make significant tradeoffs in the architecture of their IPTV system implementations, which negatively impacts their IPTV business model. With the Kontron and Astute Networks solution you have a ‘no trade-off’ standards-based architecture designed for the demands of enabling high-fidelity IPTV/VoD applications.”

The product configuration will be showcased at the AdvancedTCA Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., USA, Oct. 21-23, 2008.