OCZ has issued a new case study written by Scott Harlin which shows the implementation of OCZ's PCIe-based ZD-XL SQL Accelerator at 888.com which resulted in elimination of database SAN bottlenecks as well as reduced external SAN load by 50 percent and as well as reduced need for costly storage upgrades.


The 888.com, in case you missed it, is one of the popular online gaming providers which needed reduced database I/O pressure on the Storage Area Network (SAN), reduced SAN storage bottlenecks and annual storage upgrade cost, improved SQL Server database performance and accelerated key business analytics. The results of the aforementioned implementation of the OCZ PCIe-based ZD-XL SQL Accelerator brought return on investment (ROI) with reduced I/O load on the SAN by approximately 50% alleviating workload pressure placed on it. The overall result made the SAN more efficient and the reduction in I/O traffic enabled the SAN to be used more efficiently for storing additional application data as well as eliminated the need for annual storage system equipment purchases and associated costs, generating a ROI within several months of deployment.

The online gaming usually requires a high-performance IT infrastructure that is capable of processing multiplayer transaction in real-time, discover usage patterns and data relationship and in the end, deliver a world-class gaming experience. The main infrastructure challenge was to put the initial system configuration, which included an HP ProLiant DL580 server featuring 256GB of memory with 4 processors supporting 10 processor cores used for reading and executing program instructions, which was then upgraded to to an HP ProLiant DL980 server supporting 4 CPUs, 10 processor cores and 1TB of memory paired up with a high-end SAN with multiple RAID sets and a full SSD tier featuring auto-tiering and internal caching that resides in front of the hard disk drives (HDDs). Despite a rather impressive configuration, the main bottleneck was the fact that HDD performance could not keep up with the generated I/O load from application and data analytic servers.

The new case study shows that OCZ's PCIe-based ZD-XL SQL Accelerator can reduced I/O workload traffic and strain it places on the SAN. With innovative flash caching, the Direct Pass Caching Technology, as well as TempDB flash volumes, the new solution managed to drop the I/O traffic by 50 percent without any new SAN equipment or any additional HDDs.

In case you are interested in detailed results, you can download the new case study via link below.










Source: OCZ.com.