Case Study: Barton Systems achieves 10x faster, lower-cost, easily scalable software-defined storage with Microsoft Azure

Belgian infrastructure provider uses Storage Spaces Direct to create blazingly fast storage solution

Barton Systems, a Belgian datacenter infrastructure provider and subsidiary of the Cronos Group, faced rapidly growing customer data and shrinking IT budgets that made traditional SANs—expensive, proprietary, and hard to scale—increasingly impractical. All‑flash options improved performance but were cost‑prohibitive, so Barton needed a higher‑performance, lower‑cost, and easier‑to‑manage storage alternative.

Barton built a turnkey software‑defined storage product, Barton, using industry‑standard servers with Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 plus the Barton Glass management console (with Nano Server, Storage Replica, and OMS integration and technical help from Acuutech). The result: up to 10× higher IOPS and 8× throughput at SAN‑level features for a fraction of the cost, simplified management that reduces the need for specialist engineers, easy scale‑out expansion, and flexible disaster‑recovery options.

Barton Systems

Tom Verté

Managing Partner