Xsigo Systems, Inc., the leader in virtualized data center infrastructure, today announced that Bitbrains IT Services, a leading provider of cloud services and the first VMware vCloud Powered provider in the Netherlands, has deployed an open systems-based hardware platform that includes Xsigo virtual I/O to optimize Oracle database performance. Compared with the Oracle Exadata hardware platform, the Xsigo-based platform provides substantial savings on the solution cost while delivering performance close to that of Exadata when running Oracle software.

"At Bitbrains IT Services, our fast, cost-effective cloud services running Oracle and other  databases are a large part of the value we offer to our customers. Thus our hardware platform has to deliver the highest possible performance and availability," said Gjalt van Rutten, CTO of Bitbrains. "With Xsigo virtual I/O, we built a performance-optimized solution tailored for demanding workloads. With this platform, we can now offer our customers the fastest possible service at less cost than our competitors who employ expensive proprietary gear."

The Bitbrains IT Services platform employs Xsigo VP780 I/O Directors, Dell M610 blade servers, Dell Equallogic SSD and specialized in-house developed Flash Cache accelerated Solaris Express-based IB connected storage. The Xsigo I/O Directors' InfiniBand fabric delivers up to 40Gb of bandwidth to each server to eliminate performance-robbing I/O bottlenecks, and incurs less than half the latency of Ethernet alternatives to accelerate time-critical server-to-server communications.  Also, the Xsigo fabric reduces by 50 percent the CPU load related to cluster communication by enabling the use of Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) for communication between Oracle RAC cluster nodes.

"We've proven the performance and reliability of the Xsigo virtual I/O solution, providing Oracle database services as well as High Performance Computing (HPC) services to some of the world's largest financial firms," van Rutten continued. "Our customers are universally amazed by the speed and value that Bitbrains delivers, and Xsigo virtual I/O contributes tremendously to those capabilities. To now offer our customers the performance of Oracle's flagship Exadata solution at a fraction of the cost is simply incredible."    

Benefits of the Bitbrains service as compared with traditional IT infrastructure include: 

• Capacity on demand: Customers can quickly add capacity to meet changing business requirements
• Performance on demand: Customers can accommodate peak workloads without having to build in wasteful excess capacity
• No capital investment: Customers pay only for the services used 

"Bitbrains excels at offering their customers incredibly fast, efficient cloud and database services, so Oracle performance is absolutely essential to them," said Mark Hardy, director of EMEA for Xsigo. "We are thrilled that Bitbrains capitalized on Xsigo's performance and feature set to offer best-of-breed Oracle capabilities at an industry-beating cost."