Windows Storage Server 2012

 

Windows® Storage Server 2012 is the Windows Server® 2012 platform of choice for network-attached storage (NAS) appliances offered by Microsoft partners.

 

As part of a network-attached storage appliance, Windows Storage Server 2012 can help reduce the storage costs associated with building modern datacenters and private clouds. It enhances the traditional file serving capabilities and extends file based storage for application workloads like Hyper-V, SQL and Internet information Services (IIS). Windows Storage Server 2012 delivers excellent economics for a shared storage solution by leveraging industry standard hardware matched with robust storage capabilities. It delivers continuous availability that is designed to protect from a range of failures and prevent downtime in a scalable and reliable manner.

 

Microsoft partners offer specialized hardware and additional software components to create NAS appliances based on Windows Storage Server 2012.

 

Windows Storage Server 2012 based NAS appliances are best suited for you if you are seeking to deploy a dedicated turnkey solution for highly reliable, high-performance shared storage, for example your database needs. If you are a customer who wants to deploy a converged private cloud infrastructure which also includes the ability to run physical or virtual workloads including line-of-business applications, you should consider Windows Server 2012 for your needs.

 

Windows Storage Server 2012 offers a number of greatly enhanced capabilities and benefits when compared with previous versions of Windows Storage Server. Most importantly, it offers:

 

 

With Windows Storage Server® 2012 you can deploy and manage storage for server applications such as Hyper-V, SQL and IIS in the same manner you manage storage for traditional file serving. Windows Storage Server 2012 helps reduce the cost of storage significantly by delivering FiberChannel/SAN-like performance on industry-standard hardware with excellent throughput and multiple redundant paths from the server to the storage. In addition, it includes advanced capabilities such as on-line corruption repairs and storage pooling to enhance its reliability. Best of all, your organization will be able to leverage existing skillsets and easily deploy, manage and provision application storage in the same way as it would for their file shares.

 

 

Windows Storage Server 2012 includes a robust range of file serving and storage capabilities. It addresses heterogeneous environments, enables more efficient storage utilization and is delivered as a turnkey, file based storage solution on industry standard hardware. Delivering a similar level of performance and reliability as more expensive storage solutions, it offers unified storage with support for both file (SMB and NFS) and block (iSCSI) protocols, allows for a flexible mix of configurations and enables efficient storage utilization with thin provisioning and data de-duplication technologies. Allowing you to manage storage in the same way as Windows Server workloads, Windows Storage Server 2012 takes advantage of your Windows Server management skill sets and tools including Active Directory, PowerShell and System Center.

 

 

Windows Storage Server 2012 helps preserve uptime by enduring failures, at multiple tiers, including storage, network and compute, without noticeable service interruption. Organizations of all sizes will be able to benefit from higher levels of availability with transparent failover of applications and the ability to maintain clustered environments without service disruption. Windows Storage Server 2012 offers high levels of availability, reliability, and performance that were traditionally only seen in datacenter deployments, but are valuable to customers of all sizes.