Storage Server R2, iSCSI Windows Boot Start Shipping

Published: April 5, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Microsoft was on hand at the Storage Networking World Spring 2006 extravaganza in San Diego, California, this week and the company announced that Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, the cut-down version of the Windows server platform tailored for network-attached storage (NAS) arrays, was being shipped to OEM customers.

Microsoft says that using Storage Server R2 can improve the performance of a NAS array by as much as 25 percent compared to general-purpose file servers (such as plain-old Windows Server 2003), and because of the storage management features woven into the product, Storage Server R2 can cut data management costs and disk use by as much as 50 percent. And because SharePoint Portal Services can see into devices running Storage Server R2, end users can collaborate on a single document stored on the NAS array. Storage Server R2 is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and is being used by more than 50 vendors in their products, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced that Windows can now be booted over an iSCSI connection using normal Ethernet cards and talking to storage area networks. This functionality was delivered in conjunction with IBM, which has been creating such a feature so Windows servers can be linked into the RAID arrays under the skins of its iSeries midrange servers. IBM has offered a hybrid OS/400-Windows co-processor for its midrange gear for more than a decade, which allows OS/400 to centrally manage the disk storage for one or more Windows instances. IBM had been using a variant of Fibre Channel called High Speed Loop to link outboard xSeries servers to the iSeries and its file systems, but this approach was expensive and limited the number of xSeries machines that could be linked to the iSeries; the HSL optical adapter is not a small device, and it only fits inside certain xSeries machines. Now, with iSCSI support, any xSeries server with a Gigabit Ethernet link will be able to link back to the iSeries using iSCSI. IBM has been showing off this functionality as a product preview since late last year. Now, all other server makers will be able to use it to store their Windows images out on the SAN and use cheap Ethernet links instead of Fibre Channel.