Magma PCIe Expansion System EB2R - Manual (Page 46)

M A G M A
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High Throughput storage solutions
The growing demand for storage solutions in the past few years was
one of the major catalysts behind the exponential growth in hard drive
capacity. Moreover, a new breed of faster and more efficient interfaces
have emerged in order to provide higher throughput while maintaining
the lowest possible delays in
accessing our data.
One such solution is ATTO
Technology’s FC-44ES Fibre
Channel PCIe controller. It can
reach data transfer rates of up
to 800MB/sec per channel when
taking full advantage of the PCI
Express bandwidth.
But what if this impressive performance is still not enough to satisfy a
bandwidth-hungry application such as a multi-dimensional database, or
a high-definition, real time, video streaming broadcast? In that case, the
EB2 becomes an obvious solution by allowing the user to combine up to
4 Fibre Channel controllers into one system, which, in turn, only
compromises a single PCIe slot out of the ones available in the host
computer.
Assuming we acquired the necessary hardware (controllers, the fiber
medium and an array of high-speed storage devices) the question that
arises is: How can we quantify the power of multiple controller cards?
The answer lies in an open-source application, vastly popular among
those working in the storage industry: Iometer® (see screenshot below)