Japan’s A.T. Works Implements Adaptec MaxIQ SSD Cache

Adaptec, Inc. announced that its MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance solution has been implemented by A.T. Works, Inc., Japanese Internet services provider and manager of large server farm.

A.T. Works turned to Adaptec’s MaxIQ SSD Cache Performance Solution after searching for an affordable solid state disk-based (SSD) Web and database server solution for those customers dissatisfied with performance offered by SATA or SAS-based hard disk drive (HDD) arrays. Ideal for data centers running applications with high ‘read’ operations such as Web serving, file serving, and databases, the A.T. Works solution uses customized Intel’ SSDs used as cache with Adaptec MaxIQ SSD Caching Software, plus Adaptec RAID 2405 and Adaptec RAID 5405 Unified Serial controllers to create high-performance hybrid arrays made of SSDs and HDDs. The implementation of the Adaptec MaxIQ solution at A.T. Works doubled the performance of SATA HDD RAID 1 configurations with static Web pages, and significantly outperformed SAS HDD-only configurations with dynamic Web pages.

"We had been looking for a cost effective way to add SSD components to our servers for quite awhile, but SSD capacity is less than that of an HDD and the relative cost per gigabyte is much higher," said Takuji Ikeda of A. T. Works’ Engineering Division. "With Adaptec MaxIQ, we’ve been able to create a hybrid solution of SSDs and HDDs to meet growing customer demands for large capacity, high-performance storage solutions at an affordable price."

After seeing the results, A.T. Works now encourages its customers currently using Adaptec Series 5 and Series 2 Unified Serial storage controllers to upgrade with Adaptec MaxIQ. With 9,000 hosted specialized servers, A.T. Works relies on Adaptec MaxIQ, and the included Adaptec Storage Manager, a centralized interface to enable, disable, and configure cache levels, to provide the best performance possible for its customers.