Microsoft Ignite: Previewing Windows Server 2019 With DataON S2D Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

DataON Storage, storage division of Area Electronics Systems, Inc. and provider of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) and storage systems optimized for Windows Server environments, will be previewing Windows Server 2019 with the DataON S2D family of hyper-converged infrastructure at Microsoft Ignite 2018 (September 24-28, 2018 in Orlando, FL).

DataON will also provide live demonstrations of Azure File Sync and Windows Server Storage Migration Service with the DataON Kepler-47 hyper-converged appliance.

Windows Server 2019 is the latest server OS from Microsoft. Drawing from insight from customers and product telemetry, it brings innovation around four main themes: hybrid cloud, security, application platform, and HCI.
Storage Migration Service is a new feature in Windows Server 2019, which helps users migrate servers and their data without configuring applications or users
Azure File Sync is a feature of Azure Files that allows organizations to centralize their file services in Azure while also maintaining intelligent caching on-prem.
DataON will be in the Microsoft Ignite Expo, next to the Microsoft Showcase.

“DataON has been focused on exclusively providing Windows Server-based solutions since the release of Windows Server 2012,” said Howard Lo, VP sales and marketing, DataON. “We’re excited about the upcoming release of Windows Server 2019 and how it will enable organizations to modernize their data centers and take advantage of hybrid cloud computing.”

DataON hyper-converged solutions
DataON S2D and Kepler 2-node hyper-converged solutions are built to optimize the full stack of Storage Spaces Direct. They are designed to deliver performance for an affordable price, providing software-defined, shared-nothing storage.

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DataON hyper-converged solutions are validated by Microsoft to earn the highest certification, Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD) hyper-converged infrastructure premium. WSSD solutions provide performance, manageability and security offered, delivered as a fully-deployed experience. They are also verified as Intel Select Solutions for Windows Server Software-Defined Storage, with configurations for the most bandwidth-intensive and latency-sensitive environments and plan to update this solution to support Windows Server 2019.

Working with customers to test and validate the new features in Windows Server 2019, DataON is seeing performance increases, lower latency, and better resiliency, especially with the 2-node nested mirror feature. Windows Server 2019 also provides more robust enterprise grade storage enhancements, such as mirror accelerated parity and ReFS data deduplication. With support for storage class memory, this new edition of Windows Server will enhance application performance, with caching capacity for data intensive applications.

“DataON has been a tremendous partner working closely with Microsoft,” said Jeff Woolsey, principal program manager, cloud & AI division, Microsoft Corp. “DataON has worked closely with Microsoft and Intel to deliver incredibly high performing WSSD solutions that are based on Windows Server 2019 using the latest in flash technology coupled with high speed, low latency RDMA based networking. We are excited that our partnership extends beyond Windows Server, with support for Azure File Sync, Storage Migration Service, and Windows Admin Center.”

“Enterprise and cloud data center architects are facing new larger challenges due to the sheer size and capacity of today’s data center, which is why we are collaborating with DataON to bring highly scalable, hyper-converged solutions to market,” said Jake Smith, director of data center technologies, Intel Corp. “DataON’s Intel Select Solution for Windows Server Software-Defined Storage will simplify and optimize deployment of Windows Server 2019 solutions, while utilizing Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the Intel Optane SSD Data Center family for NVMe to deliver outstanding performance and responsiveness, with greater VM density.”

DataON Enterprise Data Migration Services With Storage Replica
and Hybrid Coud Backup With Azure File
The company recognizes the challenges of enterprise data migration and announced support for data migration services with Windows Server 2019 with Storage Replica. DataON Storage Migration Services will help customer migrate server and data without reconfiguring applications or users.

Storage Migration Services allows users to migrate unstructured data from anywhere into Azure and modern Windows Servers. It is available as an extension for Windows Admin Center, to provide fast, simple, consistent and scalable migrations through an easily-learned graphic workflow.

The DataON S2D family of hyper-converged infrastructure and the DataON Kepler-47 appliance have been designed, validated and field tested with Microsoft Azure File Sync. It enables users to centralize their file services in Azure Files, while keeping the flexibility, performance and compatibility of their on-premise file server.

Cloud Tiering – Enables the most frequently accessed files to be cached locally while keeping the entire namespace locally available. Files that are not frequently accessed are tiered to the cloud and no longer occupy local disk space. They are recallable at any time in a fully compatible way and through normal file access paths. Azure File Sync handles this transparently for users and applications.
Multi-Office Synchronization – Allows a company with multiple branches to sync the same set of files to multiple sites for local access performance with or w/o cloud tiering. A replacement for DFS-R deployments.

“With DataON’s Kepler 47 product we are getting a Storage Spaces Direct cluster into our customers hands that is perfectly positioned as a local cache for Azure File Sync,” said Fabian Uhse, program manager, Microsoft.

DataON Difference
The firm is focused on customers who have made the ‘Microsoft choice’ to deploy a Windows Server-based storage solution. It has been named to CIO Review‘s 20 Most Promising Microsoft Solution Providers 2018. Its team of Microsoft experts know how to design, deploy and support Windows Server storage and will work with you to performance tune your workloads with benchmarks. DataON solutions are:

Customer-proven with over 650 enterprise deployments and greater than 150PB of Storage Spaces Direct deployments.
Certified for Windows Server 2016 and 2019 Server Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) Premium and Standard editions. Certified for Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019 (future).
Certified for the WSSD program, with hyper-converged solutions for high level of performance, manageability, and security offered.