Dynamic Duo: SuperCache-NT and SuperDisk-NT - EEC Systems' disk caching and disk compression software - Product Announcement

Once installed, Windows NT pretty much hums along untouched. Nevertheless, there are a few things you can do to improve Windows NT performance before you need to replace hardware.

SuperCache-NT and SuperDisk-NT from EEC Systems Inc. (Sudbury, Mass.) can help in the I/O arena. The products are designed to improve Windows NT I/O performance without your needing to add new hardware.

SuperCache-NT uses free physical memory as a disk cache, thus reducing data access time. EEC Systems claims performance boosts of up to 25 times greater than without SuperCache-NT, depending on the amount of RAM available for caching and the number of processors in the system.

A multithreaded device driver, SuperCache-NT makes no changes to the Windows NT operating system. Windows NT Server and Workstation are supported on Intel and Alpha platforms in both single and SMP configurations. SuperCache-NT supports both FAT and NTFS file systems.

At least 24 MB of memory is required to run SuperCache-NT. However, according to EEC Systems, the more memory in a system, the better SuperCache-NT performs. Hardware RAID configurations are supported. At this time, software shadowing and striping are not supported.

The Windows NT administrator selects the partitions to be cached when installing SuperCache-NT. For the most recent release, all partitions are eligible for catching except for the system partition. Initially using 25 percent of the system's physical memory, SuperCache-NT will use up to 75 percent of system memory for the device cache. Memory is automatically returned to the system when required for other functions.

SuperCache-NT supports both Write Through Data Protection Mode and Lazy Write (or Write Back) Data Protection Mode. In Write Through mode, data is written synchronously to the Windows NT lazy write mechanism. In Lazy Write mode, data is moved to a backing store, which is flushed once per second.

To read data efficiently, SuperCache-NT uses an adaptive read-ahead mechanism. Additionally, advanced users can adjust several parameters to tune performance. For example, users can change the size of disk transfers to be cached.

SuperDisk-NT behaves differently than SuperCache-NT in that SuperDisk-NT uses free physical memory as a RAM disk. EEC Systems claims user and batch job performance improvements of up to 30 times over a standard Windows NT system.

SuperDisk-NT supports the same hardware platforms and file systems as SuperCache-NT. Memory requirements are a little less than SuperCache-NT, needing a minimum of 16 MB of RAM. SuperDisk-NT, however, will still use up to 75 percent of system memory for a RAM disk.

Paul Buckley, senior engineer for the Applied Science Group of Buffalo, N.Y., had this to say about using SuperDisk-NT for a high-speed control and data acquisition/analysis system: "We used SuperDisk-NT to create a memory-resident RAM drive, onto which we placed a shared file. This reduce the CPU I/O burden on the acquisition/analysis processor to about 3 percent, or roughly a 10 times improvement over the original implementation. This was a completely painless way to reduce processor burden and has helped to resolve a major engineering problem."

SuperDisk-NT supports both the Write Through Data Protection mode and Lazy Write modes supported by SuperCache-NT. The system administrator chooses the desired mode at installation.

The RAM disk created by SuperDisk-NT either can look like another separate drive -- created as the S: drive during installation -- or can act as a mirror of an existing drive, taking on its identity. Picking the latter option causes SuperDisk-Nt to use the same drive letter as the mirrored drive and hides the mirrored disk behind the RAM disk. As opposed to SuperCache-NT, SuperDisk-NT can be used on the system partition. Therefore, system administrators can experiment with moving system DLLs to the RAM drive to increase system performance.

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For More Information

EEC Systems Inc.
(508) 443-5106
Fax: (508) 443-9997

www.eecsys.com

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