QNap ES1640DC 3U rackmount Dual Controller multi-bay NAS (Support RAID) – 16x SAS 2.5″/3.5″ + 1x NGFF/M.2 SATA

Overview:

The ES1640dc is whole-new product line developed by QNAP for mission-critical tasks and intensive virtualization applications. With Intel Xeon E5 processors, dual active controllers, ZFS, and fully supporting virtualization environments, the ES1640dc delivers “real business-class” cloud computing data storage. The ES1640dc features the brand-new QES operating system that allows almost limitless snapshots, block-level data deduplication, and thin provisioning with reclaim, assisting businesses in building the most cost-efficient VDI platform and storage for critical data. The ES1640dc provides the same user experience as the current QNAP NAS and QTS system, allowing business users to enjoy the easy learning curve and quickly deploy the system, and making it ideal for small and medium businesses with budget constraints or large-scale IT divisions coping with mission-critical tasks.

• Dual active controllers, NVRAM cache, dual mini-SAS channel backup, 40GbE-ready, SAS 6Gb/s-enabled (Compatible with SAS 12Gb/s)
• QES operating system which is based on FreeBSD and ZFS
• Data deduplication and compression allows hosting over 500 VDI in one chassis
• Near-limitless snapshots and SnapSync for efficient disaster recovery
• NAS and iSCSI/IP-SAN storage supporting VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM and advanced virtualization features
• Fully supports OpenStack iSCSI Cinder driver
• Scalable design, up to 1 PB total storage capacity

Features:

Intel Xeon E5 dual-controller for nearly zero downtime high-availability
The ES1640dc is powered by two Intel Xeon E5-2400 v2 processors and features dual active-active controller architecture, ensuring businesses with nearly zero downtime high availability as the standby controller can quickly take over if one controller breaks down. The ES1640dc connects to the JBOD enclosure (EJ1600) via the dual path mini-SAS design to sustain continuous operations even if an external JBOD cable is disconnected. Designed around redundancy, the ES1640dc is the best realization of reliable enterprise storage for uninterrupted mission-critical enterprise tasks and productivity.

Dual controller NAS: high reliability and high availability
“Reliability” is the primary priority for mission critical business applications. The ES1640dc adopts dual active-active controllers to provide the most reliable base for business IT storage.

NVRAM cache reducing the risks of losing write cache data
To increase random write performance and reliability, the ES1640dc features NVRAM modules (DRAM Write Cache with Copy-to-flash) to protect write data. When data is written into NVRAM, there are dedicated backup battery units to protect writing to the cache, and at the same time the data is replicated to a backup controller, to achieve 100% data integrity. NVRAM-backed write cache in the dual-controller architecture presents high performance, fault-tolerant, and helps reduce flash SSD write amplification.

To ensure write cache data safety, it is recommended to annually replace the BBU.

QES operating system combining ZFS file system
The ES1640dc features the brand-new QES (QNAP Enterprise Storage) operating system, which is based on the simple and efficient FreeBSD kernel and the ZFS file system that has been proven through years of experience to be most suitable for high-end enterprise applications. QES supports dual active controller architecture and remote disaster recovery, can be directly integrated into OpenStack cloud environments, and is designed for intensive virtualization and VDI applications with optimal performance. Continuing the same user experience with the QTS operating system, QES provides business users with an easy learning curve to quickly deploy the ES1640dc, and provides the best storage solution jointly with the current QNAP NAS.

ZFS – the best file system for business data storage
The ES1640dc features ZFS, a combined file system and logical volume manager, to support various advanced functions for high-end enterprise storage, including powerful storage expansion, flexible storage pools, simplified management, high-performance SSD cache, nearly limitless snapshots and cloning, data deduplication, in-line compression and thin provisioning with reclaim for optimized utilization for virtual machine storage. ZFS is designed with a focus on data integrity, and uses its end-to-end checksums to detect and correct silent data corruption caused by hardware defects, bugs in firmware or metadata errors, effectively protecting users data.

Deduplication and compression to maximize VDI storage performance
There could be over 90% duplicate data from OS images and applications that are spread over virtual desktops. The ES1640dc supports block-based data deduplication to optimize storage usage from redundant data. Deduplicated virtual desktops become easier to be cached to achieve optimal virtual desktop performance. In-line data compression helps shrink data size, further optimizing storage usage. For mastering storage in a virtualized environment, the ES1640dc provides businesses with the most cost-effective remote virtual desktop platform and mission-critical information warehousing.

Strong disaster recovery made by nearly limitless snapshots and SnapSync
The ES1640dc supports up to 65,536 snapshots for iSCSI LUN and shared folders. When executing a remote snapshot backup, it only needs to transfer changed data, and can use deduplication and compression to significantly reduce the amount of transferred data. The ES1640dc can provide remote backup SnapSync for snapshots at the shortest interval of every five minutes, fully supports VMware vCenter Site Recovery (SRM) technology, provides Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for SRM, and provides enterprise-class remote backup & disaster recovery solution to fulfill business continuity.

Well-rounded backup solutions to secure data
QNAP Netbak Replicator is an easy-to-use and VSS-aware backup software, and helps businesses to create complete backups in datacenter and virtualization environments without needing to purchase expensive and complex commercial software. To build a QNAP Snap Agent and VSS Hardware Provider operating environment, all applications (including VSS Service, Requestor, Provider and QNAP Snap Agent) can be deployed with VSS-Aware applications on the same server, and the minimal requirements are only one ES1640dc and one server for it to be operational.

Storage for comprehensive virtualization applications
The ES1640dc is certified for VMware vSphere 6.0, and is compatible with Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM, benefiting flexible deployment and management in virtualization environments. The ES1640dc supports VMware VAAI and Microsoft ODX to increase performance by offloading server loading for ESXi server and Hyper-V respectively, and supports QNAP vSphere Client plug-in, Web plug-in and QNAP SMI-S provider with enhanced efficiency of operations and management in virtualization applications.

OpenStack Ready
As QNAPs first “OpenStack Ready” product line, the ES1640dc is not only suitable for virtualization and virtual desktop environments but also the best choice for cloud applications. QES supports OpenStack Cinder and iSCSI Cinder Node drivers, and provides block-level storage space to virtual machines. It not only accelerates the deployment of virtual machines and enhances virtual machine image access efficiency through iSCSI, but it is also easier to integrate into commercial cloud storage platforms.

QNAP x Platform9: Deploy a Hybrid Cloud with OpenStack
Platform9 is a cloud-based OpenStack management platform. While a pure OpenStack environment can take weeks to properly deploy, with Platform9 it can be done in minutes. QNAP and Platform9 have joined forces to provide a powerful storage solution that is easy to deploy and easy to use for OpenStack environments. By adopting the joint QNAP ES1640dc and Platform9 solution you can deploy OpenStack in a very short time with the integrated QNAP Cinder driver (no manual installation required), attain highly-available QNAP storage for on-site data, and benefit from comprehensive functions and applications that are available on QNAPs enterprise-grade and affordable business-class storage solutions.