Clustered, SMB Scale-Out Storage Solution with advanced NAS capabilities

StorIron system is specifically designed to address the demands of private clouds, scale-out NAS workloads and enterprise applications. It is an efficient, cost-effective multi-petabyte platform based on single file system, serving I/O-intensive applications, storage and nearline archives.

Scale-Out File Server (SoFS) is designed to provide scale-out file shares that are continuously available for file-based server application storage. Scale-out file shares provides the ability to share the same folder from multiple nodes of the same cluster. For instance, if you have a four-node file server cluster that is using SMB Scale-Out, a computer running Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows Server 2012 can access file shares from any of the four nodes. This is achieved by leveraging new Windows Server Failover Clustering features and the capabilities of the Windows file server protocol – SMB 3.0. File server administrators can provide scale-out file shares and continuously available file services to server applications and respond to increased demands quickly by simply bringing more storage servers online. All of this can be done in a production environment and it is completely transparent to the server application.

Key benefits provided by Scale-Out File Server in include:

• Active-Active file shares All cluster nodes can accept and serve SMB client requests. By making the file share content accessible through all cluster nodes simultaneously, SMB 3.0 clusters and clients cooperate to provide transparent failover to alternative cluster nodes during planned maintenance and unplanned failures with service interruption.
• Increased bandwidth The maximum share bandwidth is the total bandwidth of all file server cluster nodes. Unlike previous versions of Windows Server, the total bandwidth is no longer constrained to the bandwidth of a single cluster node, but rather the capability of the backing storage system. You can increase the total bandwidth by adding nodes.
• CHKDSK with zero downtime CHKDSK in Windows Server 2012 is significantly enhanced to dramatically shorten the time a file system is offline for repair. Clustered shared volumes (CSVs) take this one step further and eliminate the offline phase. A CSV File System (CSVFS) can perform CHKDSK without impacting applications with open handles on the file system.
• Clustered Shared Volume cache CSVs in Windows Server 2012 introduces support for a read cache, which can significantly improve performance in certain scenarios, such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
• Simpler management With Scale-Out File Servers, you create the Scale-Out File Server, and then add the necessary CSVs and file shares.
• Automatic rebalancing of Scale-Out File Server clients   Improves scalability and manageability for Scale-Out File Servers. SMB client connections are tracked per file share (instead of per server), and clients are then redirected to the cluster node with the best access to the volume used by the file share. This improves efficiency by reducing redirection traffic between file server nodes. Clients are redirected following an initial connection and when cluster storage is reconfigured.

Flexible, Storage for Private Clouds & Scale-Out Environments

Organizations with fast-growing, rapidly multiplying file systems are beginning to discover that traditional network-attached storage (NAS)—even clustered NAS—has serious problems. Managing and supporting storage as it scales to millions of active files is extremely complex. When such massive numbers of files require separate file systems connected with many separate servers, operational complexity grows exponentially. Consolidating multiple of these file servers into high-end scale-out NAS becomes a necessity. This is where StorIron system helps to scale out to store massively large number of active files in a single namespace. It offers operational efficiency and administrative savings, combining massive scalability with automated file management . StorIron System helps:

• Consolidate a mix of workloads onto a single, standardized architecture
• Provide predictable high performance with low latency
• Manage linear performance scaling and capacity at scale

Cost-efficient, Re-inventing Enterprise Network-Attached Storage on Industry-Standard Hardware

If a traditional filer is reaching a scalability or capacity limit, customers upgrade to the next higher filer level until they reach the highest available system—this is called the scale-up approach . Instead of scaling up in a single high- end enterprise-class server node or building failover clusters to provide high availability for the filers, the scale-out system leverages software functions to build a unified namespace and exposes to the end user a single virtual cluster node with very high scalability. IRON StorIron system provides file services by implementing a scale-out approach.

WSSB FS-Series, All Flash SSD Systems: Iron FS-Series is our highest performance storage product line; built using SSD drives, it is an ideal solution for highest throughput and high concurrency applications.

• Virtualized Infrastructure Environment: Tier-1 and Tier-2 workloads and databases

WSSB HK-Series, Hybrid SSD/HDD Systems: Iron HK-Series offers right balance between large capacity and high performance of 10K HDDs and high-performance SSD Storage autotiering SSD helps accelerate file system metadata, file-based storage workflows and namespace-intensive operations.

• Virtualized Infrastructure Environment: Tier-2 and Tier-3 workloads and databases
• Digital Media: Real-time streaming and image rendering

WSSB HN-Series, Hybrid SSD/HDD Systems: Iron HN-Series offers right balance between large capacity of NL HDDs and high-performance SSD Storage autotiering SSD helps accelerate file system metadata, file-based storage workflows and namespace-intensive operations.

• Virtualized Infrastructure Environment: Tier-3 and Tier-4 workloads and databases
• Home Directories: Large Scale home directories for Windows and Unix data environments
• Internet/Web2.0: online video, audio, and image serving and web-analytics
• Business Analytics: Hadoop
• Electronic & Life Sciences: Large-scale genetic sequencing and medical imaging; libraries, tool scripts

WSSB AN-Series, All disk-near Line archiving systems: Iron AN-Series is our most economical storage product line; build using HDD NL drives, it is an ideal solution for massive capacity for lowest price per TB of capacity and lowest overall TCO.

• File Archives: For economical storage and rapid disk-bead access to data such as email and general file data archiving
• Disk-to-Disk Backup: Can be combined with compression and de-duplication technology to delivery highly scalable disk-based backup target
• Disaster Recovery: Can be combined with replication software for economical, high-capacity storage device to be located remotely

Turnkey Solution, Storage infrastructure design, optimization, POD integration and deployment services

Iron understands that organizations may not have typically expertise in house to understand and implement scale-out NAS system’s strategic advantages and capabilities—including scalable hardware and software architecture design and enhanced management features. Correctly designing and implementing a scale-out NAS system demands an understanding of and experience with high-end server environments and multiple operating system platforms, as well as storage design and management expertise.

Iron offers broad expertise in these areas to help you quickly implement a cost-effective scale-out NAS system, providing you with simplified data access and the ability to scale as needed. In addition, our highly skilled professionals use an approach designed for minimal disruption to your day-to-day operations. With extensive expertise in industry trends, business processes, NAS technologies and storage upgrades, Iron is an exceptional choice for providing services to optimize your storage environment.

• Pre-Validated POD design and turnkey implementation services
• Facilitate seamless growth of a clustered network attached storage (NAS) system
• Help reduce operating costs and total cost of ownership (TCO) through storage consolidation
• Offer ongoing management expertise to support your data storage environment