It has been an exciting journey since Microsoft introduced software-defined storage with Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012. With the introduction of Microsoft Azure Stack HCI this year, our enterprise customers are excited and ready to take that next step in transitioning from a traditional SAN to a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). HCI brings together compute, storage, and networking, offering customers better performance and reduced infrastructure cost, making it an alluring and solid alternative to a SAN.
Customers now have many choices when it comes to software-defined infrastructure. Microsoft customers can choose from over 70 validated solutions for the right environment for their application needs.
One of those choices is a Kepler 2-node solution. These solutions were born out of a concept from Microsoft’s Windows Server team, called Project Kepler-47. The goal was to see how small they could make HCI deployments for remote office/branch offices (ROBO), plus edge computing and IoT environments. How small of a physical footprint could get the hardware down to, and how small of a price tag could the hardware be purchased for, while still providing high availability and reliable storage.
In Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure (November 2018), Microsoft was named a visionary vendor for HCI. In the report, Gartner touts Microsoft’s strength as a vendor that “can meet the needs of customers seeking a single-vendor, integrated experience for edge, ROBO, data center, hybrid and cloud deployments.”
While your typical HCI deployment includes four nodes or more, we are seeing more and more customers coming to DataON asking about, designing, and deploying Kepler 2-node HCI solutions. These customers come from manufacturing, education, retail, healthcare, professional services, nonprofits, government, and banking.
So why should I choose a Kepler 2-node HCI? Why should I choose an Azure Stack HCI solution versus other HCI solutions?
The answer is simple. Kepler 2-Node Azure Stack HCI solutions deliver:
- Excellent performance for enterprise applications
- Affordability and cost savings for meeting tight budgets
- Small physical footprint for deployments where there is limited space to house data center equipment, or if the data center needs to be portable for temporary deployments
- Infrastructure scalability and enterprise resiliency
- Ease-of-use with a simplified setup and are easy to configure and maintain
- The ability to monitor and send real-time alerts to a system admin via DataON MUST with Windows Admin Center
- Seamless integration with Azure Hybrid Cloud Services like Azure Site Recovery for disaster recovery, Azure File Storage for backups. You can also easily configure Azure Hybrid Services in Windows Admin Center.
If you ask any technology vendor, they would say YES! to any solution that can deliver all of these features!
We have deployed a considerable amount of Kepler 2-node HCI solutions over the last two months and the results speak for themselves. Here are some condensed case studies to prove my point.
1. A manufacturing company
A manufacturer was looking to replace their ROBO / edge IT Infrastructure to support enterprise applications and migrate their primary data center to Azure. However, they chose to keep their ROBO IT infrastructure on-premises.
Configuration: All-NVMe 2-node solution with 1U/8-bay, slim profile and high performance optimized infrastructure. Included 48 cores, 512GB RAM, 5.4TB usable all-flash capacity with 2-way mirroring, and a 25GbE RDMA network.
Performance: ~ 600K IOPS with only 4 drives per node
MSRP: Less than $40K
Test Results:
100% Read Test, Random Workload, 4Kb Blocks, 8 Threads, 8 Outstanding I/O (a.k.a. queue depth)
70% Read/30% Write Test, Random Workload, 4Kb Blocks, 8 Threads, 8 Outstanding I/O (a.k.a. queue depth)
2. A small school district
A school district replaced an existing shared-storage architecture to host and support various district enterprise applications and file and video surveillance storage. It needed solid performance, but with a larger capacity solution.
Configuration: Hybrid, 2-node solution with 2U/12-bay and balanced IOPS and capacity-optimized infrastructure. Includes 32 cores, 256GB RAM, 97.2TB hybrid capacity with 2-way mirroring, and a 25GbE RDMA network.
Performance: ~ 600K IOPS
Cost: Less than $.04/Gb[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
100% Read Test, Random Workload, 4Kb Blocks, 6 Threads, 8 Outstanding I/O (a.k.a. queue depth)
70% Read/30% Write Test, Random Workload, 4Kb Blocks, 8 Threads, 8 Outstanding I/O (a.k.a. queue depth)
3. A business and IT consulting company
A consulting services company replaced its existing production storage, with an emphasis on scalability for future infrastructure growth, It also needed a high-performance solution to handle large amounts of IOPS and throughput.
Features: All-flash NVMe, 2-node solution with 2U/24-bay, and IOPS and performance optimized infrastructure. Includes 64 cores, 768GB RAM, 40TB all-flash NVMe with 2-way mirroring, and a 25GbE RDMA network.
Performance: ~ 1.7M IOPS with 18 cores (Intel Speed Select); ~ 1.4M IOPS with 14 cores (Intel Speed Select); ~ 900K IOPS with 8 cores (Intel Speed Select). These all have the same hardware configurations, but with a different number of cores that can be enabled or disabled in the BIOS.
Test Results: (8-Core)
100% Read Test, Random Workload, 4Kb Blocks, 4 Threads, 8 Outstanding I/O (a.k.a. queue depth)
Test Results: (14-Core)
100% Read Test, Random Workload, 4Kb Blocks, 8 Threads, 8 Outstanding I/O (a.k.a. queue depth)
Test Results: (18-Core)
100% Read Test, Random Workload, 4Kb Blocks, 8 Threads, 8 Outstanding I/O (a.k.a. queue depth)
Here are more reasons why we believe our Kepler 2-node HCI solutions optimized for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI are the best on the market today for SME, ROBO and enterprise edge deployments.
- Industry-leading performance– All-flash and hybrid Intel Select Solutions, native support for Intel® Optane™ SSDs, and 20/40/100GbE RDMA SMB3 networking
- Outstanding infrastructure scalability and enterprise resiliency– Features the 2nd generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor, scales from 2 to 16 nodes with multiple clusters using “cluster sets”, provides high availability and better fault tolerance with nested resiliency
- Flexible compute and virtualization– Supports up to 24TB RAM and 512 logical processors, supports up to 12TB RAM and 240 virtual processors per VM, and leverages Intel® Optane™ technology for storage and memory support
- Simple operations & management– Simplified SAN-like management of the HCI environment with browser-based Microsoft Windows Admin Center with the DataON MUST extension for alert services with Azure Monitor integration
- Supports hybrid cloud services and capabilities– Includes hybrid cloud services with Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery and Azure File-Sync, and Azure Monitor integration for better analytics
Intrigued by the idea of a Kepler 2-node Microsoft HCI solution? Contact us and we’ll be happy to work with you to see if a Kepler 2-node solution is right for you.