Avere Systems has announced that it has posted the first ever SPECsfs2008 NFS.v.3 results using a public cloud storage service as persistent storage. The results prove that with an edge-core storage architecture, the cloud can replace traditional storage arrays as the repository for corporate data.

Avere Systems FXT Edge filers with FlashCloud™ for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) from Amazon Web Services (AWS) provided Cloud NAS storage that enabled the performance scalability via familiar NAS protocols on customer premises at the edge of the storage network, while leveraging object-based cloud storage services provided by Amazon S3, in the core of the storage network. The use of Amazon S3 eliminated the need for owning, provisioning and managing the storage capacity.

“Until now, public cloud storage has been used primarily for backup and archive applications because of poor performance due to latency imposed by the physical distance of the data center to the cloud, and the simple gateway products used to translate file to object protocols are not designed to handle the demands of enterprise applications,” said Ron Bianchini, Avere president and CEO. “These results show that with a scalable, cloud-ready storage architecture, organizations can begin to move data currently stored on premises to services like Amazon S3 in order to take advantage of the enormous cost savings.”

The tested Avere Edge filer configuration consisted of three FXT 3800 nodes backed by the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and achieved 180,141 ops/sec with an overall response time of 0.86 msec. A similar test run with the same nodes backed by a ZFS-based NAS system achieved 180,043 ops/sec with an overall response time of 0.87 msec. The cloud storage service used in the test included a subscription to Amazon S3 to store data, and a separate subscription to AWS Direct Connect providing private 1Gbps connectivity from the Avere Edge filer cluster directly to Amazon S3.