DataOn 1640 - On trial - First impressions

Well having got every thing unpackaged, time for my first impressions. I will also be explaining the lab environment I will be using for my tests.

Hardware

At first glance this is a solidly built piece of kit. I am surprise how compact it is measuring just 470mm deep, it is how ever worth noting this thing is heavy and will definitely a two man install.

All models include dual power supply's but  the model I have on test is the DNS-1640D also includes two SAS I/O Modules for I/O redundancy. I believe all versions come fully populated with drive caddies and adapters to enable the installation of SATA drives are also available.

Each of the SAS I/O Modules has three SFF-8088 SAS connectors. Two are labelled in and one out, although I have been told that they can all be used as either inputs or outputs.  There is also a rj45 socket but the manual says they are for factory use only.

The only real negative I will mention and I do feel I might be being ultra picky I would say the clips on the disc caddy's are a little bit on the flimsy side of things compared with the likes of HP.  Having said that I do not envisage the disks being swapped on a regular basis.

Lab Environment

For my test environment we are using a pair of HP DL360's running Windows Server 2012 r2 as our Hyper-v Cluster nodes which we will be using for our Scale Out File Server. We will be using our existing lab cluster for all of the other required servers such as the DC, and test load VM's.  Below is a diagram of the environment.

Its worth noting we are not trying with this setup to run the performance to the maximum. Quite frankly our lab servers are not up to the job.  We will be concentrating on how this works with Storage Spaces, SOFS and how it well it copes with the downing of a SOFS node.  This will not be an in detail step by step how to but I will try and point you in the right direction of how you could set this up yourselves.

So next time I will explain how we configured our test lab environment.