Hello,
IT Pro magazine in the UK posted a new review of Boston’s newest Igloo, a Windows Storage Server 2012-based appliance. Something about a 2U form factor with 24TB of storage that makes me smile.
They posed a great question: “Boston’s Igloo combines Windows Storage Server 2012, a high capacity and Xeon E5 performance. Is this the perfect storage partnership? I couldn’t help but to think of Stephen Colbert’s famous line when I read this and in my head I rewrote it... “A great partnership? or the greatest partnership?”
Storage demand is growing at an astronomical pace with most analysts confirming that in the next three years the demand for storage will not only double, it will triple or quadruple today’s rate of consumption to over 120 million terabytes per year! Most business are used to paying a lot for storage, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Using industry standard hardware you can now enjoy storage at low prices. With Windows Storage Server 2012, users can enjoy a full suite of storage management capabilities and get the latest high-speed network storage protocols.
Boston (http://www.boston.co.uk) has done a great job putting together the Igloo 2U-24T-Stor
Read the review here: http://www.itpro.co.uk/server/19863/boston-igloo-2u-24t-stor-review
My favorite section:
Windows Storage Server 2012 (WSS2012) is now a formidable force in the network storage market and a good choice for SMBs thanks to the raft of features introduced by Microsoft. Along with combined NAS and IP SAN services, it introduces block-level deduplication, thin provisioning, storage pools and much more.
Boston has always been a keen supporter of Microsoft’s storage software and its latest Igloo 2U-24T-Stor teams Windows Storage Server 2012 up with a powerful hardware package. This 2U rack appliance delivers 24TB of raw storage in a Xeon E5 equipped appliance and all at a very reasonable price.
It has twelve hot-swap drive bays at the front all kitted out with 2TB Seagate Constellation SAS2 hard disks. All 24TB is up for grabs as the OS is loaded on a pair of mirrored 250GB Seagate SATA SFF hot-swap drives lurking at the back alongside the dual redundant 920W PSUs.
Here are some of my favorite points from the product overview page:
The Boston Igloo 2U-24T-Stor has up to 12 x 3.5" hot-swappable SAS/SATA drive bays at the front of the chassis, each fully populated as standard with 2TB hard drives. This provides an exceptional storage capacity of 24TB per 2U enclosure. The chassis, designed by Supermicro, is also equipped with a dual-expander SAS2 backplane, giving redundant paths to each disk through separate cables, enabling higher bandwidth and better performance.
The operating system is installed on a mirrored pair of hot pluggable 2.5” drives. These drives are rear-mounted, ensuring vital 3.5” drive bays are not wasted and data-storage capacity is maximized.
This high performance storage server is powered by an Intel Xeon E5-2609 processor, providing 4-cores and PCI Express 3.0 functionality for improved I/O throughput. Memory bandwidth and capacity are both in abundance with the inclusion of four memory channels and the provision to upgrade to up to 512GB of DDR3 ECC Registered memory respectively.
The Igloo 2U-24T-Stor is also 10GbE enabled with 10GbE Base-T ports. This means that it can be directly utilized in an already deployed 1GbE Base-T infrastructure, ready for the 10GbE upgrade of tomorrow. 10GbE delivers a significant step forward in connectivity, offering improvements in latency and network bandwidth.
Key Features:
- Windows Storage Server 2012 NAS and ISCSI SAN appliance
- Supporting SMB, NFS and ISCSI protocols
- Supports thin provisioning and data de-duplication
- 12x 3.5" Hot-swap SAS / SATA Drive Bays
- 24TB in a 2U enclosure
- Powered by the latest Intel Xeon E5-2600-series processor
- 2x 10Gb Ethernet ports – 10GBase-T
- Powered by Supermicro
I also noticed that Boston received Storage Magazine’s (www.storagemagazine.co.uk) stamp of approval:
Congratulations to the entire Boston team and I can’t wait to hear stories from customers that deploy them!
Scott M. Johnson
Program Manager
Windows Storage Server