Recreational Products Company Ups Its Game with Storage Spaces Direct & DataON

Company Overview

A recreational products company looked to Microsoft and DataON to power its main data center and support its sales, engineering, and manufacturing teams. The company has about 1000 employees at its main headquarters and regional offices throughout the Untied States.

IT Challenge: Upgrade from NAS storage and modernize storage for its remote offices

The company needed to update storage for its remote offices. For years, it had been utilizing Hyper-V and network attached storage (NAS), but the company needed more resiliency and larger storage to fit its growing needs.

Initially, the company sought out a storage area network (SAN) solution, but it was very expensive. After hearing about the SAN-like resiliency that Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct offered, the company contacted its primary vendor but was unable to get a quote. The company reached out to other vendors and contacted DataON.

• The company’s initial goals in updating its IT infrastructure included:
• Modernize storage for its remote offices
• Find with a solution with SAN-like capability and resiliency, but without a SAN-like cost
• Find the right knowledgeable vendor with whom to partner

The Solution: Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct and DataON Kepler 2-node (K2N) hyper-converged appliance for its remote offices and DataON S2D series hyper-converged infrastructure for its main data center

The company saw DataON at Microsoft Ignite and was originally considering a DataON Cluster-in-a-Box (CiB) solution for converged storage. “Then we started hearing about Microsoft’s Storage Spaces Direct solution and we liked how it had built-in redundancy which you can’t get with a SAN. If something breaks, we don’t have to buy another SAN. We can simply replace a node. Plus, we don’t have to buy extra equipment for shared storage.”

“We chose DataON because they specialize in Storage Spaces Direct and were very responsive to us,” the network administrator said. “We were referred to some of their customers, and we liked what we heard.”

Although the company was originally looking for a storage solution for its remote offices, the company initially tested a DataON S2D solution in its main data center. Satisfied with a successful deployment and good performance, the company came back to DataON for a solution for its remote offices.

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“There is more resiliency in Storage Spaces Direct. If something breaks, we don’t need to buy another SAN. We can simply replace a node.”

Network Administrator

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DataON proposed a 2-node solution that’s designed for remote office/branch office (ROBO), edge computing, and Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Storage Spaces Direct is designed to support clusters as small as two nodes and DataON worked closely with Microsoft’s testing of Storage Spaces Direct with 2-node clusters. The company chose DataON’s K2N-212 hyper-converged appliance, a good choice for locations where space for servers is limited.

The Results

The company deployed the DataON S2D and K2N solutions without any major issues. “I took the documentation and deployment scripts that DataON provided and was able to perform the deployment and migration on my own. Storage Spaces Direct is very similar to Hyper-V so there wasn’t a big learning curve for me with Storage Spaces Direct.”

In its main data center, the company saw a significant increase in capacity and read/write performance, allowing it to double the number of virtual machines (VMs) from forty to eighty-six. The company also got the redundancy and resiliency it lacked in its previous ecosystem, saving them from having to buy extra equipment for shared storage. In addition, it saves the IT team from weekend and late-night work because they can perform maintenance on the nodes without taking the entire system offline The DataON and Storage Spaces Direct cluster now runs the company’s mission-critical applications, including Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP with a SQL Server backend, and supports SharePoint, file server, and remote desktop services.

With the DataON K2N solution, the company got exactly what it needed: a cost-effective and space-effective storage solution. Satisfied with the performance from the K2N-212, the company plans to purchase additional DataON K2N appliances for other regional offices. The company is also continuing to grow its corporate data center by adding more DataON S2D nodes.

Although the company’s IT team primarily uses PowerShell, it is also using DataON’s MUST visibility and management tool with Microsoft’s Windows Admin Center. “It’s been very helpful for troubleshooting when issues arise and saves us time finding root cause.”

These tools simplify the task of monitoring and managing Windows Server environments. MUST works as an extension within Windows Admin Center and extends the functionality of Windows Admin Center by adding functionality such as disk mapping, historical data reporting, system alerts and call-home services.