Sun storage system delivers high performance

Sun's latest addition to its high-end enterprise storage repertoire -- the iSCSI-based Sun Storage 7410 Unified Storage System -- is certainly a high-performance offering, but we found some usability and some integration issues.

[ How we tested Sun's Storage 7410 Unified Storage System | Archive of Network World tests ]

The system leverages Sun's ZFS file system, and uses solid state disk (SSD) to replace expensive cache and improve both read and write performance without the need for expensive 15,000 or 10,000 RPM hard drives. It uses up to six, 100GB SSDs for a read cache, and up to four, 18GB SSDs per drive shelf (up to 16 total) for a write cache.

Sun claims a maximum performance of 288,000 I/Os per second (IOp) and 1.1GBps throughput for the 7410, and based on our limited testing, we feel it should be able to sustain those kinds of numbers with either four, four-port 1Gbps Ethernet or multiple 10Gigabit Ethernet adapters.

The system consists of one or two Sun Storage 7410 controllers equipped with eight, 2.5-inch drive bays, accommodating up to six 100GB SSD drives and two 500GB SATA drives for boot purposes. The 7410s are connected to as many as 12 J4400 drive shelves, each of which supports up to 24 SATA drive bays, of which up to four can be 18GB SSDs for write caching. The 7410s are connected to the J4400s via external SAS cables.

The system Sun shipped to us to test consisted of two Sun Storage 7410 controllers, each with two 100GB SSDs and two 500GB SATA drives, and one J4400 system with four 18GB SSDs and 20 750GB SATA drives. The 7410s each had seven gigabit Ethernet ports, plus one lights-out monitoring (ILOM) port and a serial management port, as well as KVM connections.

Each 7410 controller had 16 Opteron cores, 128GB of RAM, and two 100GB SSDs set up as read cache. Three of the gigabit Ethernet ports are used for cluster interconnects and four are available for iSCSI traffic. There are three open slots, which can be used for four-port Gigabit network interface cards or dual-port 10G adapters, for a total of 16 gigabit Ethernet ports or eight 10G ports.

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