Microsoft Ignite: DataON Workload-Specific Solutions for Azure Stack HCI With Must 3.0 for Windows Admin Center

DataON, a division of Area Electronics Systems, Inc., announced workload-specific solutions for Azure Stack HCI with MUST 3.0 for Windows Admin Center.

The company is one of the first Microsoft partners to offer solutions for Azure Stack HCI optimized for specific workloads. These solutions was showcased at Microsoft Ignite 2019, in Orlando, FL.

Azure Stack HCI is designed to simplify hybrid cloud scenarios, helping customers combine data center computing and Windows Server technologies with Azure management services integration. It helps customers solve IT challenges while scaling and evolving as business and IT needs change. It features the same Hyper-V based software-defined compute, storage, and networking as Azure Stack and shares similar testing and validation criteria.

To help customers select the right solution for their workloads, the company’s solutions for Azure Stack HCI are optimized for specific workloads:

Branch office and edge – Meet the evolving IT demands of branch offices, retail storage, and field location. The company’s Kepler 2-node and 3-node solutions, including our Kepler-47 G2, were the first validated Azure Stack HCI solutions designed for remote office/branch office, and edge environments.

VDI – Use more desktop services, highly available VMs, and integrated scalable storage to support your large-scale virtual implementations. The firm’s HCI-212 and HCI-224 4-node solutions provide infrastructure support for VDI, with all-flash flat (all-NVMe SSDs with no cache tier) configurations available.
High-performance SQL Server – Deploy and manage high-performance, scalable SQL Server running on HCL. The company’s all-flash Kepler 2-node solutions with Optane SSDs or Optane persistent memory for the cache tier are designed for HA and faster SQL Server workload performance.

Trusted enterprise virtualization – Leverage virtualization-based security and assurance-certified hardware to protect your security-sensitive workloads. The company’s HCI-212 and HCI-224 4-node solutions provide infrastructure support for shielded VMs, with all-flash flat (all-NVMe SSDs with no cache tier) configurations available.
Scale-out storage – Combine storage performance with validated hardware to centralize organization’s file shares. DataON is the first to offer a JBOD-based hyper-converged storage solution with the firm’s HCI-668, enabling petabyte-level storage and scalability.

The company has been offering customized, turnkey solutions for Azure Stack HCI since launch, from 2-node all-flash solutions for SMB, ROBO, and edge environments to 4-node all-flash and hybrid solutions for enterprise environments.

The firm’s solutions for Azure Stack HCI are also verified Intel Select Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, featuring 2nd gen Xeon Scalable processors, Optane DC SSDs, and Optane DC Persistent Memory. The company offers all four validated configuration solutions: data center base, data center plus, edge base, and edge plus.

MUST 3.0
The company is also announcing MUST 3.0 for Windows Admin Center. The second gen MUST extension provides real-time monitoring with alerts that free system administrator from having to continually monitor their data center.

MUST 3.0 features:

Redesigned dashboard – Provides an overview of your Azure Stack HCI environment, including server nodes and cluster utilization.
Enhanced disk mapping – Provides a disk map of entire node including number of disks, disk type, location and slot of each drive, and disk health status. MUST supports over 20 configurations for disk mapping.
Alert services – Provides real-time e-mail alerts to system administrators based on Microsoft Health Service faults. E-mail alerts can be setup based on multiple levels, such as critical, warning, and information.
Call home service – Integrates alert services with Azure Analytics to provide real-time monitoring of the firm’s solutions for Azure Stack HCI for disk failures or predicted disk failures. MUST can notify system administrators and start the process to send a replacement disk.
Diagnostics deployment tool – Click a button to generate a report of environment, pull configuration and disk mapping from Azure Cloud, and complete installation.

These features provide additional functionality to MUST which already adds to the Windows Admin Center experience by providing disk mapping, historic data reporting, call home service, and system alerts.

“With DataON MUST, DataON was the first company to provide a custom-built monitoring and management tool for Windows Server 2016 HCI deployments, and one of the first companies to provide a native extension for Windows Admin Center,” said Howard Lo, VP, sales and marketing, DataON. “MUST 3.0 demonstrates our commitment to providing innovative tools that simplify the deployment, monitoring and management of Microsoft Azure Stack HCI environment through Windows Admin Center.“

Bernardo Caldas, partner director, Windows Server, Microsoft Corp. said: “As customers’ IT and business needs change, Microsoft and its partners continue to provide solutions that are robust and flexible. Microsoft is proud to have partners such as DataON who have developed solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI that meet the needs of customers who are shifting to hyper-converged infrastructure and hybrid scenarios for better data center efficiencies.“

Azure Services from DataON
As a certified Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, the company is committed to delivering complete hybrid cloud solutions to our customers. It has certified Azure Administrators on staff to help design and deploy Azure Services like Azure Site Recovery for DR, Azure File Backup and Azure Blob storage for cloud backups, and Azure Monitor for predictive monitoring for data center environments. Hybrid cloud service integrates the firm’s on-premises Azure Stack HCI with Azure Cloud for an hybrid cloud experience through Windows Admin Center and MUST.

DataON difference
The company is focused on customers who have made the ‘Microsoft choice’ to deploy Windows Server-based hybrid cloud and storage solutions. Its team of Microsoft experts know how to design, deploy and support Windows Server storage and will work to performance tune workloads with benchmarks.

The firm’s 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.
Validated for Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD) programs.
Validated Intel Select Solutions for Azure Stack HCI. The company is the first Intel Premium Partner to offer all 4 validated configuration solutions: data center base, data center plus, edge base, and edge plus.
MUST monitoring and management tool that integrates with Windows Admin Center to provide the management and hybrid cloud services experience for Azure Stack HCI environments from a single integrated console.

Read also:
DataON: New Gen Intel Select Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI and SQL Server
Powered by 2nd gen Xeon Scalable processors, Intel SSD, and Optane DC persistent memory
September 23, 2019 | Press Release
DataOn Kepler-47 G2 Hyper-Converged Appliance and HCI-668 Hybrid Storage Solution for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
Solutions for Azure Stack HCI with second-gen Kepler 2-node appliance and hybrid storage solution to store up to 4TB per cluster
May 30, 2019 | Press Release
DataON Reveals Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
Blend Windows Server technologies with Azure management services for hybrid innovation
April 5, 2019 | Press Release