Broadberry CyberStore 316S WSS review

Microsoft also includes its Single Instance Storage (SIS) with WSS2008, which provides data deduplication, but only at the file level, not the block level. It uses a Groveler service, which looks for duplicate files and moves them to a Common File Store.

SIS isn't new, but it's been improved to support clusters and up to 20 volumes per server. You can also disable SIS on volumes, but all operations have to be carried out from the command prompt.

It worked well during testing, as we created a volume with two shares and copied the same 4GB data sample to each one. SIS was applied to the volume, and after less than an hour the total amount of used space had dropped from 8GB to 3.5GB, indicating there were duplicate files within the base sample.

You also get Microsoft's DFS (distributed file system), which creates redundancy across shared folders as they reside on multiple servers but appear under a single namespace. A client accesses the namespace, and DFS transparently redirects them to one of the shares. If you lose one server the client can still access their files on one of the other member servers.

DFS provides file-replication services, which keep content on partner servers synchronised. This is important for DFS operations, since it ensures member servers all have the same content in folders defined in a namespace. All new files created are replicated, and deltas or file modifications are replicated at the block level.

Users of the NTBackup utility will be pleased to see it's been replaced with the Windows Server Backup tool. This is essentially the same as that provided with Vista, and is accessed from Server Manager. You can run scheduled or on-demand backups, but note that disks must be used as backup destinations as tape drives are no longer supported.

WSS2008 isn't as exciting as we'd been led to believe, but existing features have improved. If you prefer your network storage services to be running on a Windows platform then the CyberStore 316S WSS is a good choice, since it combines these benefits with massive expansion potential and good performance.

Author: Dave Mitchell