Listen to this articleStorPool Storage software was built on the belief that data storage should be cheaper, simpler, and more effective for both private and public clouds. It offers the highest-performance reliability, flexibility, and scalability to its clients and replaces traditional SANs, all-flash arrays (AFAs), and other less-efficient storage software on the market. Here is our recent interview with Boyan Ivanov, CEO and Co-founder of StorPool:
Q: Could you explain advantages of using StorPool as the storage backend for OpenStack?
A: StorPool is a software-only storage solution which is fully integrated with OpenStack. It provides better alternative, compared to expensive and complex SAN or all-flash storage arrays and an order of magnitude gain in performance/efficiency compared to the most popular block-storage software alternatives.
Q: StorPool is next generation data storage software; what are the biggest benefits for the users?
A: StorPool builds shared storage from many standard servers, acting as one virtual storage box. Unlike most other solutions, it has fully distributed architecture and was built from ground up. Furthermore StorPool is designed for high-performance, primary block storage and excels at this use case. The results speak for themself: StorPool is arguably the fastest and most efficient block storage software on the market today.
In a nutshell: StorPool is faster, better, cheaper.
Related: mxHero – Sees Its Mail2Cloud Suite As Onramp For Cloud Storage Adoption
Other important advantages are:
• reliability – StorPool has an advanced end-to-end data protection algorithm resulting in unmatched reliability;
• scalability – StorPool scales-out seamlessly, without interruption;
• simplicity – StorPool is very simple to operate. A junior system administrator is usually capable of managing the system with minimal training; and last but not least;
• cost reduction – the missing piece of an efficient cloud is an efficient distributed storage software. With StorPool companies can reduce not only storage costs, but IT infrastructure as a whole;
Q: Could you tell us something more about your pricing model?
A: In StorPool the underlying price driver are GB raw on HDDs and GB raw on SSDs. Most of our customers choose the monthly recurring pay-as-you-go license. The overall solution price (thus effective price per GB usable) depends on the business need/use case and how you architect the system around desired performance, capacity, features, reliability scheme, etc. We’re yet to see something as disruptive in terms of slashing TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) as StorPool, still exact savings depend on your use case.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: We have been developing very fast for the last few years. Experts are amazed by the maturity and feature richness which StorPool has now. Many IT opinion-makers deemed these capabilities impossible to deliver or out of reach for a company at our stage. We’re happy to amaze people and we plan to accelerate the development of the product, while keeping the focus on block-storage cases.
If you look at our features list it already includes most features you would expect from a high-end storage array. Still there is so much we can do to make the product even more useful. In particular we’re working on extending compatibility and ecosystems support. We are also working on usability improvements, extending monitoring, statistics and adding capabilities beyond core storage functionality – for example backup, DR (Disaster Recovery), etc.
Q: How would you convince the reader to start using StorPool?
A: I would not try to convince the reader to do anything. At StorPool we have a different approach – we do not drown people in marketing hype and buzzwords. We believe in honest communication and long-term win-win relationship. Thus we provide candid advice and we do not push StorPool where it does not belong. Our solution is the best pick for particular set of cases – when companies need shared block storage – be it for applications, VMs, databases, or anything that needs fast, scalable and reliable block-level storage.
Our doors are open to anyone who wants to “touch” our software. Often executives from different companies reach out, so that they get to know us before they start working with us. They are always very welcome. We also perform demos on demand and provide free test version on customer’s hardware. People hear about us in all sorts of ways and we are always available to show them how our system works and more importantly – how it can add value and solve issues for them.
Related: Brainloop Inc. – Securely Manage And Collaborate On All Your Confidential Documents
Q: Where do your customers come from?
A: As we deliver software, we can service customers in any geography, as long as they are OK with doing business (and having support) in English. We do remote installations and 24/7 support.
Geographically, we receive interest from across the globe, covering all continents. Currently we are working mostly with companies from 3 continents – Europe, North America and Asia, but we receive increasing number of requests from Australia and some from South America as well.
Q: What are the most common use cases that you encounter?
A: Usually we get a call when a company is building or upgrading a private or public cloud and needs a “software-defined” or “hyper-converged” solution (excuse the buzz-words). Although we do not focus on particular industry, most of the companies we work with are service providers or IT companies – they tend to be early adopters of these technologies. Interest from more conservative sectors are picking-up as well – financial, industry, telecoms, government, etc.
Related: MakeSpace – Cloud Storage For Your Physical Things
Q: Any final remarks?
A: I’d like to connect the dots between some master trends. Data is growing exponentially. Applications and use cases multiply. The demands for business agility and efficiency are becoming pervasive. This commands new IT paradigms. And this is why the “software defined” paradigme had such wide resonance in the industry.
Companies now realize that they cannot run the way they used to – servers and storage from two or three-letter vendor, virtualization from VMware and network from Cisco – this stack imposes vendor lock-in, caps agility and has very high TCO. This is why companies are looking into innovative software solutions – to extend capabilities and to increase the performance and quality of their service, at a reasonable cost. Companies that fail to innovate on this front will start losing market share and will eventually get acquired or get out of business.
Activate Social Media:
