Testing Cisco UCS x Fujitsu AF250

Read on to find out how the Fujitsu AF250 is a great storage solution for Cisco UCS.

The following test has been conducted by Ingram Micro’s Mohammed Balal, Pre-Sales Technology BDM – Hybrid Cloud & DC.

The Opportunity

I was recently presented with an opportunity to have a loan Fujitsu AF250 storage array for a couple of weeks to see how it performs and to test the confidence Fujitsu has put in its performance.

I wanted to see how easy it was to set up, integrate into our existing VMware environment and to see how well it performed with other technology vendors in a mixed environment. The end goal was to package an AF250 with other vendor products so we can take this to our partner community as a viable 3-tier data centre or edge solution.

This test is about gaging the performance mark-up you would achieve if moving over from a storage solution which has been running for 4 years or more. This is not a like-for-like test as such. 

The Fujitsu is also very price competitive and can be value for money against standard spinning drive SAN.

 

Conclusion

Overall the AF250 offers exceptional performance, from the different workload tests conducted the AF250 delivered very high IOPS and throughput and low latency. What was more impressive when running the various test was how stable the performance is with very little fluctuations in performance from the graphs almost a perfect flatline.

This is important when working with demanding real-world workloads, where consistent performance is critical in delivering the best possible results, if throughout IOPS begin to fluctuate, workloads will begin to suffer and cause performance issues which can then traverse to another component in the stack and have an adverse effect on end user experience.

For Cisco partners looking for a storage solution to complement the Cisco UCS servers and networking the Fujitsu AF250 is very capable Storage Array, it really is a hidden gem in the world of storage and tends to be overlooked purely because people are not aware of it. 

 

Visit the Cisco UCS x Fujitsu AF250 page to download the full Proof of Concept to see the full details of findings from this test.

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