Iron Networks shows a complete private cloud pod at MMS 2013 with Windows Server 2012 (Storage Spaces, SMB3, Hyper-V) and System Center 2012 SP1

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I was visiting the expo area at MMS 2013 earlier today and saw that Iron Networks was showing a private cloud pod there, complete with a set of well-matched layers of compute, storage and networking.

They were demonstrating several of the latest capabilities in Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, including:

  • Shared SAS Storage with Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces, with multiple JBODs and different tiers of storage (SSDs, performance HDDs, capacity HDDs)
  • Windows Server 2012 Scale-Out File Server Clusters using SMB 3.0, including SMB Multichannel and SMB Direct.
  • Dual 10GbE RDMA networks for storage, dual 10GbE networks for tenants. Plus dual 40GbE aggregate switches and a management switch.
  • Cluster-in-a-box solutions implementing several roles, including a Network Virtualization Gateway, System Center 2012 SP1 and File Server Clusters.
  • Dense set of compute nodes running Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V hosts with lots of cores and memory

Here is some additional information from their booth signage:

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They had a live system in the booth that was actually used in several demos at MMS 2013, including some of the keynote demos.
I took a picture and put some labels on it. Compare the physical systems below with their diagram above.

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Loved this hardware! Makes our software solution really come to life...