Aberdeen Helps Out Aviation Applied Technology Directorate

With the U.S. Army in need of a large, fast storage solution for
hosting user data and providing disk-based backups, Jeff Dupere, network
administrator of the AATD (Aviation Applied Technology Directorate), turned to Aberdeen, LLC.

"We also needed a complete turnkey solution to begin leveraging a
virtualized environment," Dupere. "This included a storage area network, hosts for running the virtual
machines, and the Fibre Channel connectivity to tie the two together. Also, the
entire solution needed to be VMware-certified."

Dupere with the expertise of one of Aberdeen’s
engineers helped to determine the best solution for the U.S. Army’s
environment and needs. The solution included four Stirling 266 servers
(2U SuperServers that support Intel’s Nehalem processors), an XDAS D-Series
SAN (a 4U, 24-bay Fibre 8G/SAS 6G DAS), and a Stirling X888
(an 8U storage server).

"The Stirling
266s provided us with the hosts for running our VMs, the DAS gave us the
backend storage for hosting the data for those VMs, and the X888 met the
storage requirements for our user data and disk backups, "Dupere says.
"The equipment offered all of the
required features necessary for the job, such as full redundancy, high amounts
of storage, and fast I/O."

Aberdeen’s
solution was evaluated against several well-known competitors. "In the end, the solution Aberdeen offered was well-supported, exceeded
our performance requirements, and was significantly less expensive than the
other offerings," Dupere says. "They are also one of the few companies I’ve seen to offer a full
five-year warranty on virtually all of their equipment at no additional cost.
Given our life cycle commonly exceeds three years on server hardware, this was
a significant advantage."

With its dual LGA 1366 sockets, the Stirling
266 is a 2U SuperServer 6026T-TF that’s capable of utilizing Intel’s high-end
Nehalem processors. There are also 12 DDR3 sockets that can support up to 192GB
of Registered ECC DDR3 or up to 48GB of unbuffered memory with ECC. Helpful
features include support for KVM over LAN and virtual media over LAN through
the integrated IPMI 2.0 and Realtek dedicated LAN. The U.S. Army will also
enjoy peace of mind with built-in PC health monitoring. There are four onboard
voltage monitors for the processors, as well as six fans with tachometer status
monitoring. Environmental temperature monitors, including chassis and CPU overheat
alarms, provide further security.

"The
Stirling 266 is what the engineer recommended,
and based on previous experiences, I was happy to go with his suggestion,"
Dupere says.

Aberdeen
also preloaded ESXi on the hosts of the server, which made the environment
turnkey for the Army. "We more or
less just had to install the equipment in the racks and turn it on,"
Dupere says. "They also were able to
provide all the extras we needed (additional drives, controllers, etc.) to make
onsite repairs much quicker."

The Stirling X888
storage server can provide up to 100TB of storage, and the U.S. Army took
advantage of the X888’s dual SFF-8087 miniSAS connectors to connect with the
Aberdeen XDAS D-Series SAN to deliver up to 196TB of storage.

"We needed a ton of storage and very fast
I/O," Dupere says. "The Stirling X888 had this in spades – so much so that we’re
in the process of buying another to supplement our environment."

For
fast I/O when needed, the server features quad Gigabit Ethernet LAN and dual
SAS expansion ports. And Aberdeen’s
Teaming Technology offers transfer rates up to 430MBps with an added XDAS-iSCSI
RAID enclosure. The Army also benefits from Intel’s QuickPath Interconnect
Tech-nology, which can be found on Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors, providing
them with 6.4GTps and 4.8GTps data transfer speeds.

The SAS RAID on the X888 includes dual IOP348 1,200MHz PCI-E
controllers, and each controller features 512MB of DDR2-553 SD RAM with ECC
protection. The controllers support RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10. Overall, the Stirling X888 can provide up to 1,200MBps of internal
transfer speeds. The RAID controllers can also support SATA disk drives and SAS
hard drives at the same time. External SAS connectivity is also available via
the SFF-8088 connector. The miniSAS backplane on the X888 provides the Army
with 50 (48 front, 2 rear) hot-swap/hot spare SATA 3.0 drive bays.

The 8U chassis comes with a 1,760W 3+1 redundant hot-swap power supply. Fan
maintenance is also a breeze with the eight hot-swappable 80mm cooling fans.
Options for flexibility with the build include a DVD-R or CD-RW and software
upgrades such as iSCSI, NAS, SAN, and backup software.

The XDAS
D-Series is a 4U high-speed, high-availability SAN that features four 8GB FC host ports on each of the controllers, which are for the
fast throughput and I/Ops needed by the U.S. Army. The XDAS also features
support for 6Gbps SAS drives to provide support for fast HDDs. The XDAS D-Series is also designed to be always available with fault-tolerant
hardware modules, including redundant controllers, PSUs, and fans. As such,
there’s no single point of failure for the U.S. Army.

Other protection features include real-time problem detection and
notifications through multiple monitoring capabilities on the XDAS. And firmware helps to protect against hardware failure to optimize
performance and maintain data integrity. The XDAS D-Series uses a power supply
that’s more than 80% efficient, and it can spin down the drive to save energy
when the disks aren’t in use.

The U.S. Army benefits from the XDAS D-Series’ local
replication abilities. XDAS storage provides the Army with both snapshot and
volume copy/mirror capabilities. Full data copies let administrators
restore service if a RAID volume fails, and files can be restored or rolled
back through the XDAS’ snapshot copies. Some upgrades the U.S. Army chose to
add include increasing the bandwidth across the FC fabric and adding
larger drives.

Dupere says that the set of products the Army chose from Aberdeen has met or exceeded all of the
group’s expectations. "Aberdeen is not a huge company like some of their
competitors, as evidenced that few folks will recognize the name when you bring
it up," Dupere says. "That
said, they offer solutions and equipment that are every bit on par with the
commonly referenced brands in this genre. From sales, to the product itself, to
the support you receive afterward, you will not be disappointed."