DataON Hyper-Converged Cluster-in-a-Box Receives Microsoft Certification

DataON Storage announces the Microsoft certification of the end-to-end 12Gb/s Cluster-in-a-Box (CiB) appliance for storage spaces functionality in Windows Server 2012 R2.

DataON is a provider of tiered storage hyper-convergence architecture, delivering scale-out storage for applications that demand fast performance (hot tiering) and scaling capacity (cold tiering). With dual clustered nodes, the CiB-9224 takes the reigns to lead in shared storage hyper-convergence by delivering continuous failover data protection-built upon the Grantley platform with Xeon Haswell-EP processors.

“Speed is everything-the DataON Cluster-in-a-Box delivers sheer performance and HA piece of mind,” Corey J Hynes, CEO, Learn on Demand Systems. “I now have a total of four solutions deployed and I love this CiB platform, it is ideal for Windows Server 2012 R2 deployments.“

Microsoft Certified Cluster-in-a-Box
Converged CiB innovations are in direct response to customer requests for a cost efficient and flexible appliance to power high performance workloads with clustered storage resiliency into SMB, ROBO, and enterprise infrastructures. A converged design using Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) architecture enables concurrent VMs and shared storage simplicity without needing hard-to-justify investments in over provisioned all-flash array pure storage hardware-relying upon outdated 6Gb/s technology.

“With Windows Server 2012 R2, you can use direct-attached SSDs and HDDs to create tiered Storage Spaces. This type of storage solution is a cost-efficient way to take advantage of the performance of SSDs with the economical capacity of HDDs,” said John Loveall, principal program manager, Windows Server, Microsoft Corporation. “DataON’s CiB-9224 combines the availability and manageability features of a Cluster-in-a-Box solution built on Windows Server and Storage Spaces, with 12Gb SAS connectivity. This enables a converged solution that supports high-performance shared storage ideal for large-scale Hyper-V deployments.“

Environments running multiple VMs benefit from the use of SSDs which offer performance and low latency. The CiB-9224 Hyper-V Direct running as a parallel VM and storage appliance is tuned to run applications with large working sets, such as SQL Server 2014 databases supporting online transaction processing (OLTP). These applications need performance, but also demand predictable l/O latency that 12Gb SAS flash delivers. The increased cost nature of flash is addressed by allocating flash for only the data blocks that are frequently accessed, and using Windows Server 2012 R2 compression and deduplication.

“The CiB platform provides improved performance and efficiency for cloud and enterprise datacenters by doubling I/O storage performance,” said Jas Tremblay, VP marketing, data center solutions group, Avago Technologies Limited. “Avago applauds DataON Storage for advancing the adoption of 12Gb SAS with its new Cluster-in-a-Box appliance.“

CiB-9224 front and back

The CiB-9224 can concurrently run 100+ VMs with tiered shared storage (SSD/HDD) and over 1TB of memory from a single appliance-eliminating the complexity and sprawl of disparate IT devices. Coupled with cluster-aware file systems like Windows Server 2012 R2, the CiB-9224 Hyper-V Direct (concurrent VM and storage) running in a homogeneous Windows Server 2012 R2 appliance, offers a tiered storage platform proven to deliver million IO/s performance with affordable scalability, by use of Microsoft certified JBODs.

“Ask yourself, how are hyper-converged all flash pure storage solutions flexible? Aren’t flexible flash appliances designed with strong cost per IO/s and efficient cost per terabyte ratios?” states Trenton R. Baker, VP, business development, DataON. “The Cluster-in-a-Box platform with tiered storage provides million IO/s performance for the files that need it and TBs of capacity for cost efficient cold-tier data growth.“

As veterans in the converged storage industry, DataON has seen success shipping highly available Cluster-in-a-Box appliances since 2013. The CiB-9224 and the shift to 12Gb/s performance strengthens the company’s position in convergence architecture. Unlike typical all-flash array (AFA) designs, the CiB-9224 delivers redundant storage resources in a single appliance available to any cluster-aware Software-Defined Storage (SDS) file system, while lowering TCO and deployment complexities.

DataON is shipping the CiB-9224 turnkey HDD and SSD hyper-converged appliance for Hyper-V and tiered SOFS Storage Spaces beginning under $30,000 and high flying million IO/s all flash array solutions with 9TBs priced under $60,000-less than $.05 per IO/s.