Adaptec Unveils Data Conditioning Platform

Adaptec, Inc. unveiled a strategic vision for developing new and better methods for intelligently routing, optimizing and protecting data as it moves through the I/O path. Called the Adaptec Data Conditioning Platform strategy, this intelligent I/O management approach will result in solutions that will enable the growing market of public and private cloud data centers to significantly lower costs, maximize system performance and achieve meaningful Green IT objectives without requiring changes to existing storage architectures, application software or operating systems.

                      Data Centers benefit from reduced costs,
                                performance, and greener IT

"As massively-scalable, cloud computing data centers become the norm in providing IT services to businesses around the world, they will face ongoing customer and competitive pressure to increase performance, improve operational efficiencies, and to be ‘greener,’" said S. ‘Sundi’ Sundaresh, Adaptec’s president and CEO. "We believe that by leveraging Adaptec’s core competencies, chiefly our ability to condition and optimize data in the I/O path, we can provide valuable solutions that address these needs and expand our business."

Adaptec’s Data Conditioning Platform is designed to simplify the adoption of new technologies and minimize the risks and performance hit traditionally associated with integrating new data center technologies by ensuring seamless compatibility with all leading servers, storage devices and operating systems, and adhering to commercial off-the-shelf hardware standards. The Data Conditioning Platform is built upon Adaptec’s 28 years of storage I/O innovation, insight from its global installed customer base, and developed by world-class ASIC and software development teams with hardened expertise in developing trusted storage I/O solutions.

To support the new strategy, Adaptec announced its newest product family under the Data Conditioning Platform banner. The Adaptec MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance Solution is an industry ‘first’ for building and managing intelligent, High-Performance Hybrid Arrays (HPHAs) that combine both solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs) to achieve I/O performance up to five times faster than HDD-only arrays and savings of up to 50 percent in capital and operating expenses. The Adaptec MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance Solution integrates customized 32GB Intel(R) X25-E Extreme SATA SSDs with Adaptec’s SSD Caching Software, to dramatically accelerate read-intensive applications in demanding data centers without disrupting existing operations.

Increased Functionality at Reduced Costs
By integrating new and additional capabilities in the I/O data path, Adaptec will continue to provide cloud computing and other large enterprise data center environments with new products that can dramatically reduce capital and operating expenditures, while also improving system performance. Two examples of data conditioning innovation include Adaptec’s Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection, the first maintenance-free, flash-based cached data protection solution, and Intelligent Power Management, which reduces storage power and cooling costs by up to 70 percent.

Intelligent, data optimization functionality delivered through Adaptec’s Data Conditioning Platform aims to reduce the amount of server and storage hardware required, and lower ongoing operating costs by reducing power consumption, maintenance costs, and physical space requirements. In addition, the Data Conditioning Platform enables intuitive, centralized management of servers and storage systems.

As computing environments continue to grow in size and scope, Adaptec’s Data Conditioning Platform can scale to meet increasing throughput requirements and improve server and storage utilization at the maximum I/O performance. The Data Conditioning Platform will also help data center managers achieve meaningful ‘Green’ objectives by minimizing the number of servers and storage devices previously required, and reducing direct system power and cooling power costs.

"Continued growth in cloud computing will inevitably lead to increased competition among cloud providers which will in turn put pressure on these providers to find new ways of increasing the efficiency and performance of their services without having to redesign their entire operation," said Gene Ruth, Burton Group senior storage analyst. "Innovation that can reduce up front capital cost and ongoing operating expenses, that can ensure optimal utilization of existing hardware resources, and can make a measurable dent in energy usage, will be of real interest to any data center managers running demanding applications in high-performance environments."