Powerful and cost-efficient Intel® Xeon® D based Enterprise ZFS NAS, optimized for inline deduplication and all-flash applications

The ES2486dc Enterprise ZFS NAS is QNAP’s first high-availability NAS with all-flash arrays and dual active controllers. Powered by an Intel® Xeon® D-2142IT 8 cores/16 threads processor, the ES2486dc supports up to 24 x 2.5-inch SAS 12Gbps SSDs and provides excellent I/O throughputs. Random write performance for all-flash arrays is further driven by the flash-optimized QES 2.1.1 operating system that comes pre-installed on the ES2486dc. The QES uses ZFS to support logical volume management; block-based inline data deduplication and inline compression reduce I/O and SSD storage consumption, which significantly extends SSD lifespan with higher price-performance ratio for all-flash storage arrays.

Active-Active high availability with optimal storage efficiency
In Active-Active storage system architecture, both controllers can provide a comprehensive range of services, which is different from the Active-Standby architecture of single-controller systems. An advantage of Active-Active architecture is the lack of idle computing resources. To leverage the strengths of the ES2486dc Active-Active controller architecture, QNAP recommends creating multiple storage pools and distributing ownership between both controllers to enable simultaneous output from both controllers for improved load balancing.

Active-Standby single-controller system
With two HA systems you are paying twice the price, and the HA system can cause load imbalances because workloads are only processed on the active system. Moreover, a power outage can cause data loss, while network disconnections will invalidate the HA architecture.

Active-Active dual-controller system
Both controllers of the ES2486dc can carry traffic, along with Copy-To-Flash protection against power failure and the dual-path SAS interface design. Besides conserving computing resources, a high-speed, uninterrupted, and high-availability storage service is also provided through communication protocols such as SMB, NFS and iSCSI.

Intel® Xeon® D dual controllers optimize inline deduplication and SSD workloads
Powered by Intel® Xeon® D-2142IT 8 cores/16 threads processors, the ES2486dc delivers massive computing power to maximize inline data deduplication and inline compaction performance. The dual active-active controller architecture provides failover/failback operations since the standby controller can quickly take over if one controller breaks down. Redundant hot-swappable power supplies and cooling fans also provide businesses with near-zero downtime and high availability. The ES2486dc connects to the JBOD enclosure (EJ1600 v2) through dual-path mini-SAS design and can sustain continuous operations even if a JBOD cable is disconnected.

Multi-level cache technology with read and write support boosts storage performance
The ES2486dc simultaneously supports read caches including primary cache (L1 ARC), SSD cache as a secondary cache (L2 ARC), and write cache ZFS Intent Log (ZIL) for synchronous transactions to meet performance demands for various enterprise applications.

Use SAS or SATA SSDs flexibly within your IT budget
Although SATA 6Gbps SSDs provide high-performance affordable storage, this type of drive is unsuitable for dual-controller environments because it lacks dual-port support. By using a QDA-SA3 adapter specially designed for QNAP all-flash Enterprise ZFS NAS, a SATA 6Gbps drive can be used in the 3.5-inch SAS drive bay of the ES2486dc— allowing storage capacity expansions with cost-effective SATA drives. By installing a SATA SSD with the QDA-SA3 into the dual-controller ES2486dc, the SATA SSD can share SAS dual-port advantages to ensure a high-availability and fault-tolerant enterprise storage environment.

PCIe expansion for 25GbE/40GbE high-speed networks
The ES2486dc provides two PCIe Gen 3.0 x8 slots connected to the CPU, allowing you to install lightning-fast 10GbE/25GbE/40GbE network cards to boost virtualization, media streaming, and other bandwidth-demanding applications. Installing a Smart NIC that supports iSER can improve VMware® virtualization performance. You can also install a SAS expansion card ( SAS-12G2E ) for connecting up to seven 16-bay EJ1600 v2 expansion enclosures to seamlessly expand potential storage capacity to over 1PB, with unprecedented performance of up to 48 Gbps per host connection.

Dual controller NAS: High performance, high reliability, and high availability
The ES2486dc adopts dual active-active controllers to provide reliable mission-critical business applications in IT storage.

QES 2.1.1: ZFS-based, and optimized for all flash performance
The ES2486dc features the QES (QNAP Enterprise Storage) 2.1.1 operating system which is based on the simple and efficient FreeBSD kernel and ZFS file system for high-end enterprise applications. QES 2.1.1 not only provides reliable data protection, recovery, and business-class features, it is also optimized for flash storage to drive outstanding performance of all-flash storage arrays, accelerating mission-critical services and eliminate challenges in VDI environments. QES 2.1.1 also comes with Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities to ensure consistent primary storage performance in multi-application environments. The flash-optimized QES 2.1.1 continues the same user experience as the intuitive QTS, thus easy to learn for enterprise users and can be quickly implemented into existing IT infrastructures.

Unleashed SSD potential – cost-effective and agile with ultimate performance
QES 2.1.1 features QNAP’s exclusive Write Coalescing algorithm that further optimizes all-flash performance in ZFS, providing a highly cost-effective all-flash solution for enterprise-class data management and mission-critical services.

Write Coalescing Algorithm
Transforms all random writes to sequential writes along with reduced I/O. Not only does it effectively increase random write performance for all-flash environments, but also improves SSD lifespan.
Software-Defined Over-Provisioning
Users can allocate an additional over-provisioning ratio for SSDs (from 1% to 60%) and Storage Pools (from 1% to 40%) for a constant performance boost over 100%.

Deduplication and compression optimizes storage usage for virtualization
The QES-powered ES2486dc provides businesses with the most cost-effective remote virtual desktop platform and mission-critical information warehousing.

Inline data deduplication
Block-based data deduplication optimizes storage usage and significantly decreases storage capacity requirements.
Inline compression
Shrinks data size to reduce storage I/O workloads for improved performance. In VDI, deduplicated virtual desktops are easily cached to achieve optimal virtual desktop performance.
Inline compaction
Especially helpful for increasing SSD storage utilization efficiency when highly-repetitive data or massive small files (e.g. bank or e-commerce transaction logs) are generated. Delivers higher cost efficiency for all-flash storage systems.

Self-Healing ensures data integrity and reliability
Designed with a focus on data integrity, the QES-based ES2486dc uses its end-to-end checksums to detect and correct silent data corruption caused by hardware defects, firmware bugs or metadata errors. If data integrity violations are detected, QES automatically repairs the data with data from the other mirror before passing it to applications.

Streamlined remote backups with nearly limitless snapshots and SnapSync
The ES2486dc supports up to 65,535 snapshots for iSCSI LUN and shared folders. In other words, if one snapshot is created every hour, and 24 snapshots are created per day, you can create up to 7 years’ worth of snapshots without having to delete any! The ES2486dc also replicates snapshots to remote servers through block-level SnapSync. In the event of a primary site failure, SnapSync assists businesses to resume essential services in the shortest possible time.

VMware SRM
SnapSync supports VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which offers enterprise-class remote backup and disaster recovery solutions for virtual applications. With the Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for SRM, operation overheads of the ESXi® server can be offloaded to a QNAP NAS to accelerate and simplify virtual machine backup and restoration.

Business Continuity
Copy-on-write technology enables instant QES snapshot creation without affecting ongoing data writing. SnapSync supports incremental backups, real-time deduplication, and compression. The source ES2486dc will perform deduplication before compressing the metadata to reduce synchronized data and save bandwidth resources.

Create VMware/Windows backups for VSS-Aware applications using QNAP Snapshot Agent
QNAP NetBak Replicator is easy-to-use with VSS-aware backup software, helping businesses to create complete backups in data centers and virtualization environments without requiring additional 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 ES2486dc and one server for it to be operational.

Compatible with VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix virtualization, and supports iSER
The ES2486dc supports VMware® vSphere® 6.5, Windows Server® 2019, and Citrix XenServer® 7.0 for flexible deployment and management in virtualization environments. It also supports VMware® VAAI and Microsoft® ODX to increase performance by offloading server loading for ESXi® server and Hyper-V® respectively. The QNAP vSphere Client plug-in and Web plug-in are also supported to increase operations and management efficiency in virtualization applications. The ES2486dc and VMware® ESXi server installed with Smart NICs that support iSER can acquire iSER advantages to offload CPU workloads with boosted VMware® virtualization performance.

OpenStack Ready for exploring out-of-the-box enterprise cWarraloud services
QES supports OpenStack® Cinder and Manila file-sharing services. With the QNAP Cinder Driver, the ES2486dc can provide block-level storage space for 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, providing businesses with a flexible, easy-to-use, and low-cost storage solution.