DataCore Software, a leading provider of Hyper-converged Virtual SAN, Software-Defined Storage and Adaptive Parallel I/O Software, today announced that Emergency Communications of Southern Oregon (ECSO) has significantly increased performance and reduced storage-related downtime with the DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN.

Located in Medford Oregon, ECSO is a combined emergency dispatch facility and Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for the 9-1-1 lines in Jackson County, Oregon. ECSO wanted to replace its existing storage solution because its dispatch application, based on Microsoft SQL Server, was experiencing latencies of 200 milliseconds at multiple times throughout the day - impacting how fast fire and police could respond to an emergency. In addition to improving response time, ECSO wanted a new solution that could meet other key requirements, including higher availability, remote replication, and an overall more robust storage infrastructure.  

After considering various hyper-converged solutions, ECSO IT Manager Corey Nelson decided that the DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN was the only one that could meet all of his technology and business objectives. DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN enables users to put the internal storage capacity of their servers to work as a shared resource while also serving as integrated storage architecture. Now ECSO runs DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN on a single tier of infrastructure, combining storage and compute on the same clustered servers.  

Performance Surges with DataCore

Prior to DataCore, performance -- specifically, latency -- was a problem at ECSO, due to the organization's prior disk array that took 200 milliseconds on average to respond. DataCore has solved the performance issues and fixed the real-time replication issues that ECSO was previously encountering because its Hyper-converged Virtual SAN speeds up response and throughput with its innovative Parallel I/O technology in combination with high-speed caching to keep the data close to the applications.

ECSO's critical 9-1-1 dispatch application must interact nearly instantly with the SQL Server-based database. Therefore, during the evaluation and testing period, understanding response times were vital criteria. To test this, Nelson ran a SQL Server benchmark against his current environment as well as the DataCore solution. The benchmark used a variety of block sizes as well as a mix of random/sequential and read/write to measure the performance. The results were definitive -- the DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN solution was 20X faster than the current environment.

"Response times are faster. The 200 millisecond latency has gone away now with DataCore running," stated Nelson. "In fact, we are down to under five milliseconds as far as application response times at peak load. Under normal load, the response times are currently under one millisecond."

Unsurpassed Management, Performance and Efficiency

Before DataCore, storage-related tasks were labor intensive at ECSO. Nelson was accessing and reviewing documentation continuously to ensure that any essential step concerning storage administration was not overlooked. He knew that if he purchased a traditional storage SAN, it would be yet another point to manage.

"I wanted as few ‘panes of glass' to manage as possible," noted Nelson. "Adding yet another storage management solution to manage would just add unnecessary complexity."

The DataCore hyper-converged solution was exactly what Nelson was looking for. DataCore has streamlined the storage management process by automating it and enabling IT to gain visibility to overall health and behavior of the storage infrastructure from a central console.

"DataCore has radically improved the efficiency, performance and availability of our storage infrastructure," he said. "I was in the process of purchasing new hosts, and DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN fit perfectly into the budget and plan. This is a very unique product that can be tested in anyone's environment without purchasing additional hardware." 

To see the full case study on Emergency Communications of Southern Oregon, click here.