Evaluator Group Tested Starboard AC72 Storage System

Starboard Storage Systems, Inc. announced that the Evaluator Group demonstrated the AC72’s ability to deliver more than 2X the performance of a leading competing unified storage system for mission critical applications at a lower total cost and less than half the cost per TB.

Two systems were compared in several tests under identical conditions running multiple mixed workloads. Testing multiple workloads in a head-to-head environment provides a more accurate depiction of how a system will perform during actual use. The Starboard storage system delivered twice the performance at less than one half the cost of $/TB.

"Maintaining performance for mission critical applications, while still providing required performance for business important applications is the type of capability IT users are looking for when configuring their IT resources," said Randy Kerns, senior strategist of the Evaluator Group. "Making tradeoff’s between applications is a reality faced daily, and having a system capable of delivering performance when and where required is imperative. The Starboard AC72 Storage System met this challenge."

The Starboard AC72 Storage System MAST architecture includes a SSD Accelerator Tier. This allows the system to leverage lower cost 7200 RPM drives while achieving performance. The AC72 delivers more capacity for a lower price while still achieving higher performance.

"Our customer’s are looking for affordable solutions for mixed workloads without compromising performance," said Lee Johns, VP of product management at Starboard Storage Systems. "The Evaluator Group’s tests and assessment of the AC72 is a message to the market that the small and midsize enterprises do not have to sacrifice performance and management over price for their mixed workloads with the AC72."

Most SME environments need to support multiple applications simultaneously. Using multiple entry-level systems to isolate workloads results in stranded storage capacity, fewer features and costly scalability. Legacy unified storage systems have twenty-year old outdated architectures relying on protocol layering that hinder performance for mixed workloads. An enterprise storage system capable of consolidating multiple workloads for mid-sized and smaller enterprises can reduce management overhead, while increasing utilization.

Starboard AC72 Storage System Advantage
It provides consolidation onto a single storage system, optimizing the configuration for each application by creating a Dynamic Storage Pool with virtual volumes tuned for each workload.

It also introduces the SSD Accelerator Tier, a second-generation tiering architecture that lowers operational overhead and provides predictable performance when and where it’s needed. It boosts performance for both reads and writes, providing tuned storage that maintains consistently performance for mixed workloads.

Combining dynamic storage pooling and automated SSD acceleration for each application workload offers SMEs simplicity in managing mixed workload environments.  

In addition, Starboard Storage Apps simplify provisioning of volumes across multiple storage protocols including CIFS, NFS, iSCSI and FC. Since the AC72 was designed to manage mixed workloads, IT administrators can dramatically reduce their time and costs in managing storage.

With the AC72 Storage System, you save as you grow with an all-inclusive software license that includes thin provisioning, mirroring, asynchronous replication and snapshots. The AC72 scales up to 474TBs with a redundant architecture.

Distribution and Availability
Starboard Storage Systems distributes its products through a network of VARs that share the goal of bringing Application-Crafted Storage solutions to market and into SMEs.

The Starboard Storage AC72 System is available. It is priced at $59,995 MSRP for an all-inclusive storage system including 24TB storage, an SSD Accelerator Tier with three SSD drives, thin provisioning, asynchronous replication and snapshots. Customers can expand the system by adding Starboard AC72 Storage System Expansion Shelves. Both 15000 RPM and 7200 RPM SAS drives are supported.

To read the Evaluator white paper (registration needed)