DataON™ Announces the Kepler 2-Node (K2N) Family of Hyper-Converged Appliances for Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct and Hyper-V

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DataON

Mar 13, 2018, 12:05 ET


ANAHEIM, Calif. (PRWEB) March 13, 2018 -- DataON, the industry-leading provider of hyper-converged infrastructure and optimized storage systems for Windows Server environments, today announces the Kepler 2-Node (K2N) family of hyper-converged appliances for Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct:

  • K2N-47 – Value-optimized solution in a mini tower form factor, with hybrid or all-flash storage
  • K2N-108 – Performance-optimized solution in a 1U rack form factor, with all-NVMe flash storage
  • K2N-212 – Flexible solution in a 2U rack form factor with hybrid or all-flash storage

DataON K2N hyper-converged appliances are low cost and small-sized hyper-converged appliances designed with integrated compute, network and storage infrastructure. They have near-linear scalability to simplify and maximize the deployment of Microsoft applications, virtualization, data protection and hybrid cloud services. They are designed to optimize the full stack of Storage Spaces Direct, a feature in Windows Server 2016, for the most affordable software-defined, shared-nothing storage.

K2N appliances are designed for smaller, remote deployments, such as small-to-medium sized businesses, remote office/branch office and Edge computing. These environments can present a challenge for IT departments because of constrained budgets, space and power footprints, and IT resources.

K2N combines high-performance NVMe SSDs with your choice of all-flash or hybrid storage to maximize performance and capacity. They are available in mini tower, 1U rack, and 2U rack form factors. All of them are designed to be turnkey, easy-to-deploy solutions that can be up and running in 15 minutes or less. The nodes in each solution are directly connected to each other without an Ethernet fabric switch. Mini tower nodes are connected via Intel® Thunderbolt™ 3 and rack nodes are connected via 25GbE cables.

K2N appliances are certified by Microsoft to seamlessly deploy with Microsoft Windows Server 2016. They have also achieved Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD) certification. This ensures that they follow Microsoft’s requirements and best practices for seamless deployments and steady-state operational experience on validated hardware. They are also certified as an Intel Select Solution for Windows Server Software-Defined Storage, to simplify and accelerate the journey from procurement to deployment to service delivery.

  • Pre-configured and stress-tested solution – Highly available (HA) and ready to be deployed out-of-the-box in 15 minutes or less.
  • Affordable solution for SMB, ROBO, and Edge – Complete 2-node hyper-converged solution at an affordable entry point price under $30K.
  • Simplified infrastructure – Windows Server 2016 hyper-converged environment consolidates compute, storage and networking, reducing space and power by up to 80%.
  • High availability and resiliency – The servers form one Windows Server 2016 failover cluster with Cloud witness as low cost, low footprint quorum technology.
  • Flexible platforms – Choose between mini tower, 1U rack server, and 2U rack form factors.
  • Performance-tuned – Leverages NVMe SSD cache and 25GbE SMB3 RDMA fabric for high performance.
  • Low-cost, high-speed networking – Mini tower models leverage Intel® Thunderbolt™ 3 technology to eliminate the need for costly network adapters and switches. Rack models are directly connected via 25GbE cables, eliminating the need for an expensive Ethernet switch.

“We were intrigued by Microsoft’s Project Kepler-47 proof-of-concept in 2016,” said Howard Lo, vice president of sales and marketing, DataON. “We productized it last year with a budget-friendly 2-node mini tower model but we wanted to expand the concept to provide more options for SMB, ROBO and Edge environments. DataON is exclusively focused on customers who have made the ‘Microsoft choice’ for their software-defined data centers, and we are proud to partner with Microsoft to develop innovative solutions to solve real world problems.”

MICROSOFT’S PROJECT KEPLER-47
At Microsoft Ignite 2016, Microsoft’s Windows Server team unveiled Project Kepler-47. It was a proof-of-concept to bring the software-defined data center features of Windows Server 2016 to remote office/branch office (ROBO), and Edge computing environments. These deployments share the need for high availability for mission-critical apps and reliable storage, and enterprise customers are looking for lower cost options in a smaller footprint.

“Project Kepler-47 was a proof-of-concept that was born during our development of Storage Spaces Direct over the past 4 years,” said Claus Joergensen, Principal Program Manager for Storage Spaces Direct, Microsoft. “The question that we were trying to answer for our customers was ‘how low can you go?’ We had a high-performing, resource-efficient and budget-friendly product in Storage Spaces Direct and we wanted to see if it was possible to create a low-cost appliance that could run Storage Spaces Direct to meet the needs of small and ROBO deployments.”

MANAGED BY MUST™
All DataON K2N appliances include DataON MUST (Management Utility Software Tool) infrastructure visibility, monitoring and management software. Fully integrated with the Windows Storage Health Service API (SM-API), it provides advanced cluster monitoring, performance metrics, system health statistics, and automated system alerts for Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct.

MUST delivers SAN-like storage monitoring features through a single pane of glass, providing real-time dashboard level metrics for IOPS, latency, and throughput on cluster nodes and volumes. With system alerts based on Windows Health Service faults and SAN-like call home services, systems administrators can be automatically notified of hardware failures, configuration issues and resource saturation.

DataON is the first to market with a tool that provides visibility, monitoring and management of your Windows Server 2016 deployments.

THE DATAON DIFFERENCE
DataON is exclusively focused on customers who have made the “Microsoft choice” to deploy a Windows Server-based storage solution. Our 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 600 enterprise deployments and greater than 120PB of Storage Spaces Direct deployments.
  • Optimized by our team of Microsoft experts to ensure successful deployments into your IT environment, tuned to your workloads.
  • Certified for Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2 and 2016.
  • Certified for Windows Server 2016 Server Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) Premium and Standard editions.
  • Certified for the Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD) program.
  • Certified as an Intel Select Solution for Windows Server Software-Defined Storage.

ABOUT DATAON
DataON is the industry-leading provider of hyper-converged infrastructure and storage systems optimized for Microsoft Windows Server environments. Our solutions are built with the single purpose of rapidly and seamlessly deploying Microsoft applications, virtualization, data protection and hybrid cloud services. Our company is exclusively focused on customers who have made the “Microsoft choice” and we provide the ultimate platform for the Microsoft software-defined data cevnter (SDDC). DataON is a division of Area Electronics. For more information, go to http://www.dataonstorage.com or call +1 (714) 441-8820.

All trademarks, registered trademarks, service marks, brands and names mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.
Thunderbolt and the Thunderbolt logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Jeff Lin, DataON, http://www.dataonstorage.com, +1 (714) 441-8820 Ext: 225, [email protected]