TestAmerica Selected Kaminario All SSD SAN

Kaminario, Inc. announced that TestAmerica Laboratories, Inc., in environmental testing, has selected the Kaminario K2 SSD SAN storage solution to increase the speed and consistency of TALS, its Laboratory Information Management System, and expand the capacity and scalability of its storage system.

TestAmerica saw measurable improvement in application performance, database operations, batch processing time, and response time for retrieving data and reports.

TALS has a direct impact on revenue, as it is designed to gather and manage data from environmental testing projects and turn it into reports for customers. When TestAmerica quadrupled its number of laboratories and customers, the challenge arose of managing the increase of test data. Optimal speed and performance, plus consistency and reliability, needed to be addressed in TALS in order to ensure customer satisfaction.

To cut processing time and improve data synchronization across its labs, TestAmerica decided to consolidate its TALS into a central data center in Denver, CO. To do this, it was important to design a storage system that could handle the new load and scale with the growing business.

"We wanted to integrate our databases onto our Dell Compellent SAN, which would help improve TALS speed and performance plus simplify backup and availability of our system," explained Nick Mahmood, VP of IT at TestAmerica. "We needed faster storage with high IOPS and low latency to alleviate our I/O bottlenecks and also meet our backup, replication and disaster recovery requirements."

TestAmerica purchased the K2 to augment its Compellent SAN. The K2 is installed in its corporate data center, in a clustered, HA environment that is running server virtualization. The company has 25 databases of different sizes currently running on the K2.

It found that using the K2 cut batch-processing time by 50%, and the response time for retrieving customer report data was reduced by 75%. The company saw measurable improvement in TALS’ performance, and gains were made in the areas of server consolidation and scalability. TestAmerica placed multiple servers on the K2 with no degradation in performance.

"Kaminario guaranteed a performance improvement and proved it," said Mahmood. "We’ve also reduced variability and created consistency in the results so they are more predictable and manageable. Database operations such as backup and large-scale queries are now much more efficient, thanks mainly to the K2’s ability to handle the increase in IOPS."

Since the data in TALS has a direct impact on company revenue, data replication and recovery are crucial to business. Therefore, the K2’s snapshot and data replication capabilities have proven to be in helping TestAmerica protect its vital data. By augmenting the Compellent SAN with the K2, TestAmerica obtains a true tiered storage environment. The company can take a snapshot and copy it from the K2 to the Compellent SAN, conducting SAN to SAN replication.
 
"The K2 added performance, consistency and reliability to our storage environment," said Mahmood. "In addition, the faster response time directly improved our customer responsiveness and, as a result, our ability to generate more business."
 

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