Before StorPool, we used a traditional redundant SAN with off the shelf hardware and commercial SAN soſtware. The previous system was not based on SSD, and the old SAN soſtware required a lot of overhead. Thus we went shopping for a new solution.

We did use a different solution and we switched as it was not reliable.

Since our first AppLogic based cloud deployments in 2009, storage speed and capacity limitations have been a reoccurring headache. Enterprise solutions had the potential to solve these problems, but were not financially viable for the client base we serve.

Yes, we are replacing a traditional redundant SAN using off-the-shelf hardware and StarWind SAN software.

We hadn't really used any enterprise grade storage solution prior to StorPool.

We first tested open-source solutions, Ceph and GlusterFS. GlusterFS is a good solution for file-based storage but it is slow for sync writing disk images. Ceph again is a good block storage solution but our test showed that on similar hardware, StorPool outperforms Ceph by a large margin.

We used a standard storage solution from QSAN, but we had issues with it at times. Also, it was impossible to scale without either buying a new one or requiring downtime.

We were running on bare-metal servers and using local RAID 10 BBWBC disk systems. We first started with SAS disks and later switched to all-SSD solutions. We had custom data migration and backup systems to manage this bare-metal configuration. However, as the number of servers grew, management and lack of flexibility became problems. Our initial experiments with building a private cloud were promising but we needed a shared storage system. In our experience, hardware storage solutions are expensive to build and run, so we started looking into software defined storage solutions.

We used OnApp IS and all VPS always had errors due to OnApp Integrated Storage backend. OnApp IS made our VPS go down daily.

CloudSigma used to run three storage solutions in parallel: an internally developed solution, based on ZFS, an all-flash array and several scale-out magnetic deployments with a commercial vendor.