R&S SpycerNode uses what Rohde & Schwarz calls High Performance Computing (HPC) file system for its media server. HPC employs redundancy using software-based “RAID” technologies called erasure coding in combination with declustering to increase overall performance and reduce rebuild times.

R&S SpycerNode features Rohde & Schwarz‘s device manager web application which makes it much easier to set up and use Rohde & Schwarz solutions in an integrated fashion. Device manager helps to reduce setup times and simplifies maintenance and service due to its intuitive web-based UI operated through a single client. In developing R&S SpycerNode, Rohde & Schwarz has introduced data protection systems based on erasure coding and declustering. Erasure coding means that a data block is always written including parity.

Declustering is a part of the data protection approach of HPC setups (formerly known as RAID). It is software based and in comparison to a traditional RAID setup the spare disk is spread over all other disks and is not a dedicated disk. This will decrease rebuild times and reduce performance impact. Also, there are no limitations with the RAID controller, which results in much higher IOPS (input/output operations per second). Importantly, there is no impact on system performance over time due to declustering.

R&S SpycerNode comes in multiple 2U and 5U chassis designs, which are available with NL-SAS HDD and SAS SSDs in different capacities. An additional 2u24 chassis design is a pure flash system. There are main processor units and JBOD units. A main unit is always redundant, equipped with two appliance controllers (AP). Each AP features two 100 Gbit interfaces resulting in four 100 Gbit interfaces per main unit.

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