DataON Cluster-in-a-Box Certified for Windows Server 2012 R2

DataON Storage, provider of OS-agnostic storage enclosures, announces its portfolio of Cluster-in-a-Box solutions and JBOD enclosures achieved certification with Windows Server 2012 R2, with support for the Storage Spaces feature, introduced by Microsoft.

One of the most dynamic additions to Windows Server 2012 R2 (#WS2012R2) is the focus on hybrid IT by including auto-tiering support for SSD, and HDDs to increase performance.

In addition to certifying its JBOD enclosure for Windows Server 2012 R2, DataON proceeded to certify the massively scalable dual-node Cluster-in-a-Box (CiB) platform for Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces. As the only certified CiB platform available for Windows Server 2012 R2, DataON offers two variants of this platform. The product-CiB-9470-utilizes the server failover and resiliency features of Storage Spaces to achieve HA dual-node clustering with a hybrid storage capacity up to 280TB in a 4U enclosure. This design requires 75% less rack space than the traditional HA clustered scale-out file storage offerings and provides a power savings of more than 30%, to give Windows Server 2012 R2 IT administrators a cost-effective appliance solution.

“In virtualization, and specifically VDI, speed is everything and CiB delivers sheer performance and HA piece of mind,” said Corey J Hynes, CEO and lead architect, holSystems. “I now have a total of three solutions deployed and I love this CiB platform, it is ideal for Windows Server 2012 R2 deployments.”

The CiB-9220 2U model provides a 12-bay dual-node solution with the versatility and robustness for SMBs and ROBO solution. It is also capable of providing a converged virtualization and file server all-in-one solution with shared HA storage to furnish a plug-and-play storage appliance. A typical CiB-9220 design certified for Windows Server 2012 R2 has an MSRP of $20,000, which includes the SSD auto-tiering (200GB SAS drives) and 1.2TB 10k HDDs.

“Windows Server 2012 R2 is a cornerstone of Microsoft’s cloud OS vision, and with Storage Spaces and Windows Failover Clustering, it is positioned to provide a cost-effective alternative to legacy, HA SAN storage,” said John Loveall, principal program manager, Windows Server, Microsoft. “The CiB, which takes advantage of Storage Spaces, is set to become a formidable platform that directly addresses the benefits of HA and auto-tiering storage with SDDs and HDDs.”

Microsoft enhanced Storage Spaces in the R2 release with dual parity clustering support, automatic rebuild, and – most differentiating – hybrid use of HDDs and SSDs. For mirrored spaces clustering implementations, new  policy-based, auto-tiering mechanism enables faster SSD devices for hot data (data that changes frequently) and pushes data changed less frequently (cold data) to the larger capacity more cost efficient SAS HDDs. This innovation allows for dynamic storage auto-tiering of hot and cold data with the inclusion of write-back caching to reduce latency. Storage administrators can ‘pin’ high priority files to the SSD tier, as in the case for Golden Images in VDI deployments, allowing data hosters and IT departments to maximize capacity and lower their cost/IO/s ratio.

“DataON Storage purpose-built the CiB storage platform to be fully optimized for cluster-aware file systems environments,” said Trenton R. Baker, VP of business development, DataON Storage. “A CiB solution utilizing Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces can deliver high density tiered capacity and optimized performance needed to deliver always-available scalable data resiliency to the Windows market.”

DataON Storage brings 25 years of storage industry experience and a worldwide install base that includes over 7PB of certified Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces-based solutions this year. Designed for cloud and branch office applications, CiB appliances take advantage of the HA of Storage Spaces, to provide a less capital-intensive approach to shared storage. For example, a CiB-9470 CiB populated with 280TB and amply configured server nodes can fetch a street price under $50,000; that’s less than 20¢/GB of HA clustered storage.

The Microsoft certified DataON JBOD expansion enclosures (DNS-1600 4U 24-bay, DNS-1640 2U 24-bay, DNS-1660 4U 60-bay) support enclosure awareness and hybrid storage tiering to foster a ‘Start Small Grow Big’ strategy with the reliability and performance required by Windows Server 2012 R2. Both DataON’s JBODs and CiB platforms are available, with certified 12Gb SAS versions coming in Q2 2014.