Life Without StorONE
Inflexibility
If trying to manage block, file, and/or object protocols, or if staying on top of new innovations within your data storage environment causes you management and cost nightmares, keep reading.
Below, you can read more about what some of the causes are of inflexible storage environments, how people have put in workarounds to alleviate the headache, and finally how StorONE has solved the problem with the most flexible storage data platform on the market.
Main Causes for Inflexible Data Storage Environments
Multi-protocol compromises
There is always too much compromise when block, file, and/or object storage is required. Accomplishing multi-protocols requires separate systems with separate processes, management, data protection, troubleshooting, etc.
Or it requires a unified system with two or all three protocols in the same system. But unified data storage is typically optimized for only one protocol, with the others being converted or gatewayed to the optimized protocol. That conversion creates higher latencies and lower performance. When the unified data storage is only two of the three protocols, then it becomes the worst of both worlds with separate systems – i.e., much more management – and reduced performance for one protocol in the unified data storage.
Inability to take advantage of data storage innovations in a timely manner
New data storage innovations in drives, bandwidth, networking, and performance come to market frequently. They become available first on servers. New server models come out every 9-12 months. But data storage systems that can take advantage of new data storage innovations are much slower. Best case is every three years. That’s a long time to wait for the latest and greatest SSDs, HDDs, PCIe, NICs, DPUs, etc. Competitors going through a tech refresh sooner have an advantage.
Can’t mix and match different capacity drives in the same RAID group
It’s simply not done. That limits customer flexibility in using newer higher capacity drives without replacing all of the drives in the RAID group. The inability to mix and match drives means being stuck with lower capacity and higher costs.
Workarounds to "Solve" Inflexibility in Storage Environments
Try Moving to the Cloud
There really are no workarounds to fix inflexibility. If you think going to the cloud is a workaround, you’ll find out what many are now realizing. Whereas it adds for you somewhat on-demand elasticity, it does so at a noticeable loss in performance at exceedingly higher costs. It does not add flexibility. Each storage protocol is a separate service with expensive fees. There is no ability to take advantage of storage innovations or adjust RAID groups. You are at the mercy of the cloud service provider.
StorONE's Flexible Storage Solution
StorONE's Virtual Storage Container™
Each Virtual Storage Container™ is a unique volume. All of the storage services including vRAID, vSNAP, vReplicate, vSecure and more are customizable within each Virtual Storage Container™. Each of these can be provisioned and share media within your environment, but customizable to read and write their own data.
Leverages common-off-the-shelf server (COTS) hardware
You can use Dell, HPE, Lenovo, SuperMicro, Quanta, or any other server vendor you have a strong relationship with. Hardware configurations are highly flexible. This allows you to take advantage of the latest Intel or AMD CPUs, PCIe gen 4 or gen 5, NVMe SSDs, HDDs, NVMe-oF, switched networks, NICs, or DPUs, and more without having to wait years.
Mix and match drive capacities in the same vRAID
Leverage new higher-capacity drives in current vRAID groups and volumes without replacing older drives.
Exceptional scalability in a small package
The StorONE Storage Data Platform allows you to scale to as much as 4 PBs in an active-active configuration.
