Infortrend EonStor B12F-R1430-M5 review

It may be small, but the EonStor is big on performance. For testing, we used a pair of Boston Supermicro dual 3GHz Xeon 5160 servers running Windows Server 2008 and equipped with LSI dual-port 4Gbps FC HBAs. We started with a single, direct attached server and gave it full access to one of the logical volumes.

We configured the Iometer utility with four workers, 64KB transfer requests and 100% read operations, and saw one server report an impressive 377MB/sec average throughput. With the second server connected to the other logical volume Iometer reported an impressive cumulative read throughput of 752MB/sec, showing the appliance was easily capable of handling the extra load.

There's more on the management front, as Infortrend includes its Java-based SANWatch utility. This provides an overview of your entire IP SAN and all available appliances. Selecting one takes you into a very smart management interface, which looks even better than RAIDWatch and offers a lot more features including volume snapshot configuration and mapping. Redundant FC host paths to the appliance are also supported, and Infortrend includes an MPIO DSM.

Infortrend's little SFF disk array sets new standards for IP SAN storage and could well signal a move away from the bulky, noisy and generally environmentally unfriendly boxes we've been used to for far too long. With the price including redundant RAID controllers it represents good value, management facilities go well beyond the call of duty, and its expansion potential will maximise rack cabinet space.

Author: Dave Mitchell