PowerNas 2U Rackmount Storage Server

Published by Richard Parry on 21st Oct 2015

Rackmount 2U

The PowerNAS Rackmount 2U is an enterprise grade storage solution with huge expansion capabilities, yet easy to manage.

For true reliability and expandability choose the PowerNAS Rackmount 2U storage server. With it’s dual SSD mirrored boot drives, integrated 12x hot-swap bays, JBOD expansion and 10GbE expansion capabilities the PowerNAS Rackmount 2U is the perfect solution for your growing business data requirements.

Up to 72TB of secure, RAID protected storage in a single 2U Rackmount form factor
Dual Gigabit LAN for super-fast transfer speeds
Powered by Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 operating system
Easy expansion with add-on JBOD enclosure allowing 1 Petabyte+ of storage in a single rack
Dual mirrored SSD boot drives for lightning fast OS performance and ultimate stability
Expandable with 10GbE, GigE LAN, Infiniband and Fibre Channel add-on cards
Redundant power supplies for reliability

Server Grade Connectivity

The Rackmount 2U uses a Supermicro server motherboard so included embedded features such as dual gigabit LAN, serial port for connectionto a UPS and IPMI port.

At the rear connections of the Rackmount 2U are;

4x USB 2.0 High speed expansion ports
Dual Gigabit (1000Mbps) LAN ports ultimate wired networking speeds
Serial RS232 port for connection to a compatible UPS
VGA video. The Mini FreeNAS is designed to be managed through the FreeNAS web interface, however power-users can use the text interface for management and optional setup if required.
IPMI - The ultimate in remote management. This is a dedicated 10/100 Ethernet port designed for connection to your network. The IPMI system will allow any Internet enabled computer to quickly connect to the server to for remote KVM, virtual media and to review health status. What's more is the IPMI will allow you to manage the system even if Windows has frozen or the system is powered off (power still applied at the mains though).

Rapid Performance

Our PowerNAS Business Rackmount 2U has blistering performance compared to other NAS products on the market. We have used the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit to perform Write to NAS performance tests.

Read performance is higher than write, but we wanted to illustrate the usual bottleneck of write performance with other products.

We tested all NAS products with the same Western Digital Red 1TB Hard Drives in a RAID-5 (or Parity mode) configuration on a TP-Link entry-level Gigabit switch.

Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 - Standard Edition
Pre-installed with WSS 2012 R2 Standard Edition - No CAL's Required - Seamless integration into an existing Microsoft network.

Use with any operating system
Can be seamlessly integrated into any existing LAN network running Windows, Mac or Linux/Unix computers

Multi file protocol support
Support for CIFS/SMB, NFS, AFP and iSCSI Target out of the box to suit many storage applications

Storage expansion
Expandable using optional JBOD enclosure allowing easy storage expansion.

ECC Memory
Error Checking RAM is ideal to ensure ultimate stability and reliability for mission critical applications.

Remote Management
Dedicated IPMI Ethernet (10/100) interface allows an Internet enabled computer to access the system through virtual KVM and to check on the system status, without having to be connected directly to the system - Ideal for remote IT support.

Rackmount form factor
Rackmount chassis designed for installation in any standard server rack cabinet. Includes full extension rack rail kit.

Windows Storage Server 2012 offers many user benefits that help organisations save money and streamline operations.

Excellent economics for shared storage Windows Storage Server 2012 significantly reduces the cost of storage by offering resilience and performance similar to high-cost storage solutions, such as Fibre Channel or SAN devices, by taking advantage of industry-standard hardware and file-based storage.

File storage for virtualisation and applications With Windows Storage Server 2012, customers can deploy and manage storage for applications such as Hyper-V, SQL Server, and IIS in the same manner as they manage storage for traditional file serving.

Datacenter-ready Windows Storage Server 2012 offers capabilities such as high reliability, availability, scale, and performance traditionally seen only in datacenter deployments due to their high value to customers of all sizes.

Simplified deployment and management Windows Storage Server 2012 is deployed as an appliance, which means the hardware and software are preconfigured dramatically reducing the deployment effort normally associated with a new storage solution.

Furthermore, with Windows Storage Server 2012, organisations can manage storage in the same way as they manage a Windows Server, meaning that they can gain leverage from Windows Server management experience and tools including Active Directory, Windows PowerShell, and Microsoft System Center.