M A G M A
High Throughput storage solutions
The growing demand for storage solutions in the past few years was one of the major catalysts behind the exponential growth in hard drive capacity. Moreover, a new breed of faster and more efficient interfaces have emerged in order to provide higher throughput while maintaining the lowest possible delays in
accessing our data.
One such solution is ATTO Technology’s FC-44ES Fibre Channel PCIe controller. It can reach data transfer rates of up to 800MB/sec per channel when taking full advantage of the PCI Express bandwidth.
But what if this impressive performance is still not enough to satisfy a bandwidth-hungry application such as a multi-dimensional database, or a high-definition, real time, video streaming broadcast? In that case, the EB2 becomes an obvious solution by allowing the user to combine up to 4 Fibre Channel controllers into one system, which, in turn, only compromises a single PCIe slot out of the ones available in the host computer.
Assuming we acquired the necessary hardware (controllers, the fiber medium and an array of high-speed storage devices) the question that arises is: How can we quantify the power of multiple controller cards? The answer lies in an open-source application, vastly popular among those working in the storage industry: Iometer® (see screenshot below)