CA, Microsoft, storage industry leaders set backup/restore benchmark with BrightStor Enterprise Backup

Computer Associates International, Inc (CA) and Microsoft Corp today announced they have achieved a record-setting 2.6 terabyte-per-hour archival backup of a Microsoft SQL Server 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 utilisation for the restore was 12% with an 8 CPU backup server.

The performance benchmark was achieved with CA`s BrightStor Enterprise Backup and hardware from Brocade, Emulex, Hitachi Data Systems and Quantum. Along with CA and Microsoft, these companies have formed the BrightStor"a Offering for Enterprise Data centres 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, Washington, campus using a 2.5TB 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 optimised 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 2Gbps 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 backup 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 VP 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 organisations 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 with 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/Solutions/Collateral.asp?id=2696.