TMCnews Featured Article

The results of the Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange 2010 Jetstress benchmark testing demonstrates that Nimble Storage arrays deliver a high degree of performance and capacity for storage supporting users of Microsoft Exchange, a robust email hosting solution. This solution also supports up to 12 times the number of Microsoft Exchange mailboxes per disk when compared to competitive storage offerings.

Specifically designed with a multi-tenant architecture, Microsoft Exchange 2010 enables email hosting providers to offer enterprise-class messaging to multiple organizations on a shared server.

The benchmark test comprises four tests designed to measure effectiveness of the storage solution in typical enterprise environments. It requires storage system providers to architect an Exchange Mailbox Resiliency solution and demonstrate how their storage arrays support typical Exchange workloads in an enterprise environment.

In the testing, Nimble (News - Alert) targeted 20,000 mailboxes, each averaging 150 emails per day. Among the final documented figures, a single 3U Nimble array with 12 spindles delivered performance above that of arrays with up to 128 spindles from other storage vendors.

In a press release, Mark Peters, senior analyst at Enterprise Storage Group, said, "These benchmarking results validate the potential for real business impact from Nimble's hybrid storage architecture."

He further added, "By designing its architecture from the ground up to integrate SSDs with high-capacity disks, Nimble effectively disconnects attainable performance from a reliance on acquiring high spindle counts, an approach that can not only significantly improve the $/IOPS of its system compared to all-spinning-disk platforms, but can also contribute to dramatically better overall $/GB as well as reduced backup times."

With the benefits shown by this solution, it’s not a shock that users who begin to leverage this solution will notice demonstrable energy savings.

In related news, TMCnet recently reported that webHOSTING.net, a provider of multiple email hosting solutions, selected Nimble CS-Series arrays.