ORLANDO, Fla., STORAGE NETWORKING WORLD (Orlando), Oct. 29, 2002 — Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) and Microsoft Corp. today announced that they have achieved a record-setting 2.6 terabyte-per-hour archival backup of a Microsoft® SQL Server (TM) 2000 database running on Windows®
2000 Datacenter Server. Test results surpass recent public benchmarks by CA and other storage industry vendors. During the testing, BrightStor Enterprise Backup’s restore performance achieved a sustained rate of 2.2TB/hr using 32 drives. Average CPU utilization over the course of the backup process was 26 percent, while average CPU utilization for the restore was 12 percent with an 8 CPU backup server.
The performance benchmark was achieved with CA’s BrightStor Enterprise Backup and hardware from Brocade, Emulex, HDS and Quantum. Along with CA and Microsoft, these companies have formed the BrightStor Offering for Enterprise Data centers to provide high-performance storage solutions, services and best practices for today’s complex, heterogeneous IT environments.
“Because SQL Server has become such a critical element in our customers’ core business operations — and because their databases have grown so large — they now require data recovery solutions that are faster, more flexible and deliver greater scalability and reliability,”
said Gordon Mangione, vice president for SQL Server at Microsoft.
“Through the BrightStor Offering, Microsoft and CA are working with storage infrastructure vendors to ensure customers can deploy these solutions with maximum performance and effectiveness.”
The test was performed at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus using a 2.5 TB Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition database running on a highly available Unisys ES7000 Orion 230 server. The Unisys ES7000 server was running the Windows 2000 Datacenter edition operating system. A high-performance storage area network (SAN) provided the foundation that optimized the mission-critical applications in the solution. The SAN was built using Hitachi Data Systems Lighting 9980 featuring Hitachi high performance Fibre Channel disk drives, industry leading 2 Gbit/sec Brocade Silkworm 3800 fabric switches, and Quantum ATL P7000 tape libraries configured with a total of 32 LTO Ultrium tape drives connected to the Unisys server via Emulex LP9002 Fibre Channel host bus adapters. CA’s BrightStor Enterprise Backup SQL Server Agent software was used along with CA’s core BrightStor Enterprise Backup technology to exploit the native Virtual Data Interface (VDI) and the ShadowImage technology from Hitachi Data Systems to ensure consistent snapshot back up and restore of the database.
“CA is extremely proud of this record-breaking achievement, and we are excited about the value this performance will bring to CA customers,”
said Nigel Turner, CA senior vice president of BrightStor solutions.
“We will continue to work with the BrightStor offering vendors to further ease the acquisition, deployment and ownership of high-performance, enterprise-class storage.”
CA, Microsoft and the BrightStor Offering industry partners will issue a series of publications outlining best practices for the configuration and sizing of storage solutions. These documents will describe and demonstrate how various types of storage solutions can be effectively applied to the backup-and-recovery needs of organizations with very large databases and/or very stringent continuity requirements. The BrightStor Offering industry partners will also conduct a series of road shows, seminars and other joint market education activities to promote storage and backup strategies for deployments of enterprise SQL Server and Windows.
In conjunction to the benchmark, Microsoft Consulting Services has published a white paper outlining the details of the benchmark process and the architecture of the lab environment. The white paper documents the specific backup-and-restore procedures tested and explores real-world scenarios to which the benchmark is relevant. The white paper is available at http://www3.ca.com/Press/PressRelease.asp?id=2109 .
About Computer Associates
Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA ) delivers The Software That Manages eBusiness. CA’s world-class solutions address all aspects of eBusiness management through industry-leading brands: Unicenter for infrastructure management, e Trust for security management, BrightStor for storage management, CleverPath for portal and business intelligence, AllFusion for application life cycle management, Advantage for data management and application development, and Jasmine for object-oriented database technology. Founded in 1976, CA serves organizations in more than 100 countries, including 99 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. For more information, visit http://ca.com .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
(c) 2002 Computer Associates International, Inc. One Computer Associates Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749.
Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
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Support for the BrightStor Offering
October 2002
“As data continues to grow at a rapid pace, organizations worldwide are turning to SANs as a cost-effective means to implement a high-performance infrastructure to enable their mission-critical applications and provide a scalable, more reliable backup and recovery solution. As the exclusive provider of the switch architecture for this benchmark, Brocade is pleased to have participated in such record-breaking results. We look forward to our ongoing work with these industry leaders to continue delivering valuable business solutions to enterprise customers.”
Jeffrey Brooks
Chief Marketing Officer
Brocade Communications Systems Inc.
“Emulex 2Gb/s LP9002L Fibre Channel host bus adapters are the ideal choice as the connectivity solution for this benchmark, delivering industry-leading performance and scalability to mission-critical SAN environments. The need for faster and more reliable data recovery solutions is a requirement for today’s advanced IT organizations. The collaborative efforts of Emulex, CA, Microsoft and other vendors have resulted in a highly robust solution that allows customers to effectively protect databases with maximum performance and efficiency.”
Mike Smith
Executive Vice President
Worldwide Marketing
Emulex Corp.
“Hitachi Data Systems is excited to be a part of this outstanding benchmark that delivers the kind of record-breaking marks that enterprise customers require for high-performance data protection. The companies will continue working closely together to help global IT organizations learn how they can effectively deploy the most powerful data protection solutions for their unique SAN environments.”
Scott Genereux
Vice President
Global Marketing and Business Development
Hitachi Data Systems Corp.
“As a leading provider of data protection, Quantum is pleased to participate as the only tape automation vendor in this strategic offering with CA, Microsoft and other storage leaders to demonstrate the fastest backup and restore performance in our industry. Our participation in this benchmark event demonstrates Quantum’s ongoing commitment to work across the industry to develop best-in-class solutions that provide our customers with greater manageability, flexibility and performance in today’s demanding enterprise environments.”
Robert Pickell
Vice President
Worldwide Marketing Storage Solutions Group
Quantum Corp.
Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
