IT is driven by costs, and every now and then, we look at options to keep the CAPEX and OPEX under check. Storage is one of the primary investment areas that have to be planned as per changing requirements. The currently available options in DAS and SAN (iSCSI or FC) come with their own set of merits and demerits. However, if you look towards increasing the merit list, you end up increasing your costs. With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft introduced an excellent storage option with the Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) and SMB 3.0 protocol.

SOFS, in essence, is a file server cluster, but in comparison with the traditional clustered file server cluster, it is quite different. SOFS is an active-active cluster, and file shares hosted by SOFS are active and accessible on all nodes, unlike the standard file server cluster, which follows the active-passive concept. Also, file server clusters have a wider usage. However, SOFS is so far confined to but recommended for Hyper...