Cisco UCS C3260 Rack Server for
Microsoft Software-Defined Storage
Solution Brief
May 2016
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces and ScaleOut File Server on 2-Node Cisco UCS C3260 Storage Server
Highlights
Integrated Storage Solution
• Integrated storage solution with
enterprise-class performance,
reliability, and capabilities
Massive Resilient Storage
• Massive resilient storage for your
applications, databases, big data,
and private cloud initiatives
Reduced Expenses
• Lower expenses because you can use
the same team to manage your entire
Microsoft environment
• Unified management integrated
with Microsoft System Center and
PowerShell toolkit
You have increasing amounts of data to
process and many lines of business relying
on that data. We have a single-enclosure
cluster solution for storing your valuable
information with high performance, high
availability, and low total cost of
ownership (TCO).
You confront many challenges every day, many rooted in the technological
limitations of IT. For example, you may not be able to respond to a customer’s order
inquiries that same day, or you may spend so much time responding to sales order
history requests you are hampered from developing new proposals, or you may be
unable to access service data. All these limitations affect customer satisfaction. The
root cause of each is slow data access caused by poorly performing servers and
outdated storage and file systems that cannot keep up with business demands.
Delivering Advantages of Cisco Servers and Microsoft Software
If you base your business on Microsoft software, you need a solution that uses
hardware designed specifically to deliver all the advantages that Microsoft
incorporates into its data storage technologies such as Microsoft Storage Spaces.
The solution you need is now available. Cisco and Microsoft have worked together
to deliver a solution that accelerates access to data, provides more comprehensive
data management tools, and is powered by the latest Intel Xeon processors to set a
new standard of excellence.
Every year you have more data to process with more demands to make it available.
You have to increase business agility by deploying private cloud infrastructure. You
have to protect your data center application data and infrastructure in the event
© 2016 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Cisco UCS C3260 Rack Server for Microsoft
Software-Defined Storage
of a disaster. If you are using video
streaming, you need a reliable and
high-performance data repository. And
you would like to increase the efficiency
of your staff by using infrastructure that
can be managed in an environment
with the same look and feel as the
rest of your Microsoft applications and
operating infrastructure. With these
demands on your storage infrastructure,
even though the cost per petabyte of
raw storage continues to decrease, the
cost of deploying, housing, maintaining,
and managing high-availability storage
is still going up.
We have joined with Microsoft to create
an enterprise-class software-defined
storage system. The system combines
the flexible Cisco UCS® C3260 Rack
Server with Microsoft Storage Spaces
for Microsoft Windows Server 2012
R2 to provide a clustered solution that
is delivered in a single enclosure. This
solution enables your staff to manage
storage volumes in an environment
with the same look and feel as your
Microsoft applications and databases.
You can use our single-chassis solution
to help protect and recover your
valuable data quickly and efficiently and
easily deploy, scale, and reconfigure
your storage to meet your business
needs.
Enterprise-Class SoftwareDefined Storage
We have a long history of creating
flexible, agile, and reliable softwaredefined infrastructure. Our solution with
Microsoft is another example of Cisco’s
dedication to creating solutions that
solve real data center and business
problems.
Microsoft Storage Spaces creates
reduced-cost virtual disks with all
the qualities you expect from an
enterprise-class storage solution:
storage pools, resiliency through
mirroring, deduplication, striping,
data tiering, and multipath I/O (MPIO)
for excellent performance. Storage
Spaces is managed like the rest of your
Microsoft Windows environment to
deliver operational simplicity.
To deliver high performance and high
availability with Storage Spaces, you
need two instances of the Microsoft
software running on a cluster. Cisco
UCS C3260 Rack Server is well suited
to this task. It provides two processing
nodes and large amounts of storage
in a single, dense, small-footprint
server. You thus get a cluster in a single
enclosure that helps reduce complexity,
ease deployment, and reduce TCO.
The configuration is deployed with two
server nodes to deliver high availability,
enterprise-class redundancy,
performance, and dynamic zoning
(Figure 1). A layer on top of Storage
Spaces, Microsoft Scale-Out File
Server, turns the entire solution into an
easy-to-manage file server that can be
accessed by your applications through
the Microsoft Server Message Block
(SMB) or SMB Direct protocols.
Large Storage Capacity with a
Compact Footprint
Today, each Cisco UCS C3260 can
support up to 448 terabytes (TB) of
dense storage in a compact 4-rack-unit
© 2016 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
(4RU) form factor that fits in a standard
rack. We plan future support for 560 TB
of storage in the same footprint. The
two internal server nodes provide the
necessary redundancy by supporting
two instances of the Microsoft
software-defined storage software.
Microsoft Storage Spaces with ScaleOut File Server creates the unified
name space that your applications
access.
High I/O Bandwidth
Each of the server’s two nodes is
configured with a system I/O controller
(SIOC) that includes a Cisco UCS
Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1300.
This device delivers excellent I/O
flexibility, performance, and bandwidth
to the Cisco UCS C3260 server. It
is a Generation 3 x16 PCIe interface
that supports both 10 and 40 Gigabit
Ethernet for a total of up to 80 Gbps of
bandwidth per node, providing just what
you need for excellent performance
with Microsoft Storage Spaces.
You can connect the server to Cisco
UCS fabric interconnects and use them
as part of a Cisco UCS management
domain, or you can connect it to both
10- and 40-Gbps Cisco Nexus®
switches. The Cisco UCS VIC is
programmable on demand, making
deployment simple, fast, and accurate.
This design allows a single device in
each server node to support all the
interfaces required by Storage Spaces:
dual network interface cards (NICs) for
each SMB, clustered shared volumes,
and management networks. Hardwareaccelerated built-in fabric failover
Page 2 of 4
Cisco UCS C3260 Rack Server for Microsoft
Software-Defined Storage
Clients
Physical Servers
Virtual Machines
Virtual Desktops
Volumes Shared Through SMB
\SRV\Folders
Microsoft ScaleOut File Server
\SRV\DB
\SRV\Video
Tiered Storage
with SSD Drives
Microsoft ScaleOut File Server
Total of 448 TB of Disk
Storage (Future: 560 TB)
Microsoft Storage
Spaces
\SRV\Backups
Instance 1
Microsoft Storage
Spaces
Instance 2
Runs on Server Node 1
1 x Cisco UCS VIC 1300
System I/O Controller
per Node
Hardware-Accelerated
SMB Protocol Support
Runs on Server Node 2
4 x 120-GB SSD
Drives for Booting
Each Server Node Equipped
with 2 Intel Xeon E5-2660 v2
CPUs, 128 GB of RAM, and
a 12-Gbps HBA
Figure 1 A Single Cisco UCS C3260 Rack Server Houses Two Instances of Microsoft
Storage Spaces Software, Creating a Cluster in a Single Enclosure
transparently connects virtual devices
to an alternative network fabric in the
event of connectivity loss.
The Cisco UCS VIC 1300 technology
works with Cisco Nexus 40- and 10Gbps switches and Cisco UCS fabric
interconnects to provide excellent
response when you need fast I/O
processing.
Connection Protocol Support
Microsoft Scale-Out File Server
supports data access using the
following connection protocols:
• Microsoft Server Message Block
(SMB)
• Microsoft SMB Direct (SMB over
remote direct memory access—
RDMA)
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
also offers NFS Servers and iSCSI
Target capabilities. Even though these
protocols are not part of Microsoft
Scale-Out File Server, they can be used
with Microsoft Storage Spaces.
Microsoft SMB Direct
Get faster access to data with Microsoft
SMB Direct and the Cisco UCS VIC
© 2016 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
1300. Network-intensive applications
like networked storage or cluster
computing need a network infrastructure
with a high bandwidth and low latency.
Microsoft SMB Direct enables the use
SMB over RDMA. The Cisco UCS VIC
1300 supports Microsoft SMB Direct
using RDMA over converged Ethernet
(RoCE). This combination provides low
lowers latency and CPU utilization for
remote data access.
Advanced Hardware Features
The Cisco UCS VIC supports advanced
features such as accelerated receiveflow steering, which improves packetprocessing efficiency. SMB Direct
accelerates storage bandwidth while
reducing CPU overhead. This feature
allows you to optimize your I/O to better
serve your business needs.
Storage Tiers
Microsoft Storage Spaces supports
two storage tiers to take advantage
of the ultra-fast Cisco UCS C3260
solid-state disk (SSD) drives and hard
disk drives (HDDs). It places frequently
used (or “hot”) data in the SSD tier
for the fastest access and moves data
that is less frequently used to the less
expensive HDDs.
You can also create a write-back cache
that uses a small amount of space on
the existing SSD drives in the pool to
buffer small random write operations.
Random write operations, which
often dominate common enterprise
workloads, are directed to SSD drives
and later are written to HDDs. This
capability absorbs temporary spikes in
I/O to provide continuous data-write
performance.
Page 3 of 4
Cisco UCS C3260 Rack Server for Microsoft
Software-Defined Storage
Storage Resiliency Options
Microsoft Storage Spaces supports
data mirroring or data parity for
resiliency.
need to allocate separate physical disks
as hot spares in the storage pool.
Data mirroring both duplicates and
stripes the data across multiple disks.
This process helps protect your data
from disk failures and provides excellent
data performance with parallel read
operations.
Cisco and Microsoft help you deliver
the benefits of Microsoft private cloud
solutions. You can rely on Cisco®
support for Microsoft Windows Server
2012 R2 with Hyper-V, as well as
integration with Microsoft System
Center 2012 R2. To help you accelerate
your transition to the cloud, Cisco
offers validated designs for shared
infrastructure and the Microsoft private
cloud. These pretested architectural
design guides help you make better use
of physical and virtual resource pools.
Data parity also stripes data across
the disks, but instead of duplicating
the data itself, it duplicates the parity
information across multiple disks. This
process doesn’t use as much disk
capacity as mirroring, but it may affect
write performance.
Parallel Rebuilding
Parallel rebuilding improves the speed
of rebuilding your data if a physical
disk fails. Rather than writing a copy of
the data that was on the failed disk to
a single hot spare, the data is copied
to multiple physical disks already in
the pool so that the previous level of
resiliency is achieved. You no longer
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Reduced Risk
Simplify While Gaining Fast
Access to Your Data
with a solution with the same look
and feel as the rest of your Microsoft
environment. This enterprise-class
solution provides high-performance,
redundant, and flexible storage in a
compact footprint that can be deployed
quickly and efficiently for all of your
Microsoft environments.
For More Information
For more information about Cisco UCS
C3260 Rack Servers, visit
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/
products/servers-unified-computing/
ucs-c3260-rack-server/index.html.
For more information about Microsoft
Storage Spaces, read
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/
library/hh831739.aspx.
The flexible Cisco UCS C3260 Rack
Servers with Microsoft Storage Spaces
for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
and Microsoft Scale-Out File System
enables your staff to respond quickly
and easily to data access requests. You
will be able to manage the storage and
associated data in your environment
For more information about Cisco UCS
and Microsoft, visit
http://www.cisco.com/go/microsoft.
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For more information about Cisco
Validated Designs, visit http://www.
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design-zone-data-centers/index.html.
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