Acopia Networks Redefines the Landscape for Clustered File System Performance

Business Wire, Oct 13, 2004

LOWELL, Mass. -- New ESG Report Validates that Acopia's Switches Outperform All Other Network Attached Storage Solutions While Using Existing Heterogeneous Storage

Acopia Networks today announced that its Adaptive Resource Switch (ARX) products have been validated to provide unprecedented clustered file system performance across extreme cases of workload conditions in a newly published report by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a leading strategy and IT consulting firm. The report, released today, cites performance tests demonstrating that the ARX switches easily exceed the throughput and file operations benchmarks of the leading Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. Furthermore, the tests used standard NAS equipment from the leading manufacturers to achieve the results, including EMC, Network Appliance, HP, Microsoft and Dell.

Highlights of the tests include:

--The ARX1000 switch sustained aggregate application bandwidth of 433 megabytes per second with near-perfect linear scaling as ports were added;

--The ARX6000 switch sustained aggregate application bandwidth of 2.2 gigabytes per second, and ESG estimates that it is capable of sustained throughput of 2.6 gigabytes per second with the same linear scale;

--The ARX1000 switch sustained 101,800 file operations per second;

--The ARX6000 switch sustained 572,300 file operations per second, and ESG estimates that it is capable of sustaining over 600,000 file operations per second;

--The insertion affect was less than 0.5% and was therefore unnoticeable;

--The ARX's performance results were shown to be consistent across all NAS equipment included in the test.

"These test results validate that the ARX products have clearly established a new performance benchmark for clustered NAS solutions," said Brendon Howe, VP of Marketing and Business Development at Acopia. "By pooling an enterprise's existing infrastructure, including products from Network Appliance, EMC, and others, Acopia enables customers to maximize the utility of their existing investment, scale their enterprise NAS, and cleanly migrate to next generation grid architectures."

"The performance and scale of the Acopia products comfortably exceed the capabilities of any single traditional NAS system or the published capabilities of emerging clustered single file systems," said Tony Asaro, Senior Analyst at ESG. "ESG Lab is confident that Acopia ARX switches have the low latency, high bandwidth, and linear scalability needed to meet even the most extreme performance demands of enterprise-class customers who are using the ARX to front end a large number of heterogeneous or homogeneous NAS systems."

Mike Streb, Warner Music Group's, VP of Global Infrastructure, has realized an immediate benefit driven by performance boosts delivered by the Acopia products. "Acopia's products increased our business workflow by 560% in the first 6 weeks," said Streb. "As a result of these performance gains, the Studio Services team is now able to focus its attention on business process efficiencies which will ultimately lead to more of our music being available for sale."

The performance report is available online at both Acopia (www.acopia.com) and ESG's (www.enterprisestrategygroup.com) web sites.

About Acopia Networks

Acopia Networks, headquartered in Lowell, MA, is the innovator of Adaptive Resource Networking platforms that provide a new foundation for intelligently managing the global distribution of data. Acopia's switches hide the "back end" complexity from users and increase the utilization of today's resources. Information about Acopia's products and services can be found at http://www.acopia.com.

About Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides strategic guidance and unmatched service to technology vendors, IT professionals, venture capitalists, and institutional investors. The Enterprise Strategy Group sets itself apart from legacy analyst firms and boutiques by continuing to build its excellent reputation of assisting clients to make strategic business and IT decisions. Information about the Enterprise Strategy Group can be found at http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com.

2004 Acopia Networks, Inc. Acopia is a trademark of Acopia Networks. All other brands, products, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of the companies with which they are associated.