Suse Linux GmbH Selects Dot Hill SAN With 80TB

Dot Hill Systems Corp. announced the Linux distributor SUSE Linux GmbH has selected the Dot Hill
AssuredSAN 3000 Series as the storage foundation for the development of its
SUSE  Linux Enterprise product family.

Headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany, SUSE is a provider of enterprise
Linux solutions that help companies increase agility, reduce cost and manage
complexity. With a portfolio centered on SUSE Linux Enterprise, an
interoperable platform for computing, it enables organizations to confidently
deliver computing services across physical, virtual and cloud environments.
With a demand for fast and reliable storage, the core development
teams at SUSE were in need of a new storage infrastructure to accommodate over
80TB of data to host their core Linux and KVM-based internal development
environment including all build and repository servers.

SUSE worked closely with Stuttgart-based IT distributor, STORDIS GmbH, which specialises in performance
computing solutions. STORDIS introduced the Dot Hill AssuredSAN range of RAID
arrays as thel storage solution that would address SUSE’s need for
reliability, performance and ease-of-use.

SUSE selected AssuredSAN 3730 networked FC RAID arrays for the roll-out
of their new storage infrastructure with an initial 80TB of capacity. During
the first days of the initial test phase SUSE noted storage
performance improvements compared with the RAID storage systems the company had
used before. AssuredSAN also presented a simple and intuitive web-based
management interface which, unlike competitive offerings, required no host-based agents and offered wizard based setup. The SUSE team was
also impressed by the number of volumes and LUNs supported by a
single system as well as Dot Hill’s patented EcoStor battery-free cache
protection mechanism.

The storage platform supports several core development infrastructures
including SUSE Linux Enterprise build servers, repository servers and also the
archive of all SUSE builds. SUSE plans to capitalise on the simple license-free
expansion capabilities of Dot Hill arrays as their storage needs grow and
are looking to implement the AssuredSAN 3000 series platforms throughout
their data centers across the globe.

"We saw an immediate performance increase
during our evaluation of the Dot Hill 3730 systems. The caching algorithms are
very efficient and the battery-free cache backup design eliminates the
write-through performance issues we were seeing with other systems,"
explained Rüdiger Oertel, software development and IT administration manager at
SUSE. "Reliability is also vital.
Many staff work flexible hours and the support staff must be online at all
times to look after our customers. Thanks to the improved system availability,
we are able to increase the workforce productivity and concentrate on our core
development business to improve our offerings and service."