Quanta QCT Cluster-in-a-Box HA Storage Appliance for SMBs

SMBs that need a cost-effective HA storage solution, or enterprises needing HA storage for remote offices have a new choice.

Quanta QCT (Quanta Computer, Inc.), manufacturer of server, storage and network products for cloud-ready datacenters, is shipping a converged cluster-in-a-box (CiB) storage appliance designed to deliver HA performance in a 2U design.

The MESOS CB220 Performance SKU ships pre-configured with Windows Storage Server 2012 Standard Edition and LSI Syncro CS.

This new version in the CB220 line provides dual active-active clustered nodes, transparent failover, and non-disruptive upgrades to ensure continuous availability of data to users, physical and virtualized servers, and applications. The design provides continuous application uptime at a fraction of the complexity of existing HA solutions. Redundancy and simplified server failover clustering is accomplished by sharing the storage in a single CiB form factor.

The solution is powered by two Xeon E5-2609 processors with 64MB of memory per node. The unit’s design employs the Quanta QCT infrastructure sharing concept, where the two nodes share the same chassis, power supplies, and fans. This design improves power and cooling efficiencies, resulting in operational cost savings compared to competitive products that do not have shared infrastructure hardware.

Earlier this year, Quanta QCT began shipping the CB220 Value SKU. This first appliance in the CB220 lineup ships without LSI Syncro CS capability, and is designed for applications that perform well with only software-based HA support.

The new CB220 adds the Syncro CS 9271-8i solution to deliver a redundant, two-server node cluster with shared storage for environments where physical space is limited. Since the CB220 is a single self-contained unit, installation of the Syncro CS solution can be conducted during system assembly. This simplifies deployment in the field allowing a complete configuration to be up and running in 20 minutes. The ability to contain the server form-factor while delivering redundancy and shared storage provides an advantage to IT administrators trying to meet these limitations.

Features of the CB220 Performance SKU include:

• Compatible with heterogeneous Windows IT infrastructure.
• HA hardware RAID, built on LSI MegaRAID technology.
• Unified storage capable: SMB 3.0, NFS v4.1, iSCSI.
• NFS interoperability with more than 16 types of Linux, FreeBSD, VMware and Open Solaris OS.
• Server message block transparent failover and multi-channel (multiple TCP connections per server message block session).
• In-box NIC teaming: mix and match NICs run in physical or virtualized environment.
• Chunk level deduplication stores more data in less physical space and delivers much higher optimization ratios.

The CB220 offers up to 48TB of internal raw capacity and can be expanded to 240TB externally with MESOS M4600H disk enclosure.

“Customers with smaller HA storage management needs still want the economics, density, expandability and performance of larger systems. The CB220 line gives them two excellent choices, including both software HA and hardware-based HA,” said Mike Yang, GM, Quanta QCT.

“Windows Storage Server 2012 provides affordable storage for customers, including organizations that need simplified and small-footprint options. The MESOS CB220 storage appliance with Windows Storage Server 2012 is designed to give Quanta customers a proven and cost-effective solution for highly available clustered storage,” said Brian Hillger, director of product marketing, Microsoft Corp.

“LSI Syncro for Windows Server 2012 within Quanta’s next-generation Cluster-in-a-Box design enables SMB and remote office IT departments to deploy an effective enterprise HA solution without the added costs of extra equipment or the complexity of a SAN. Quanta’s Cluster-in-a-Box solution is a win for its customers and will provide numerous enterprise benefits, including data sharing, scaling, and continuous availability, for a wide range of business needs,” said Jas Tremblay, VP marketing, datacenter solutions group, LSI Corp.