StoneFly Improves Storage Usage for Hosting Service Provider

Organization

A hosting company based in New Jersey offers services such as web hosting, virtual desktops, dedicated remote Windows and Linux servers, and cloud-based data storage to customers worldwide.

Industry

Hosting Service Industry | Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Challenges

The hosting company deals with a wide range of use cases for their customers. In order to accomodate all of them, they have to provide different types of storage and servers. With their legacy infrastructure, this was usually done by setting up dedicated servers or desktops for each new customer. This process was time consuming, expensive, and it created storage silos that were large and difficult to manage.

Additionally, this inefficient process made their daily tasks more difficult. If they needed to create a new file storage and sharing server for a new user, they had to set up a dedicated or shared server. Once a dedicated or shared server was created, they were unable to utilize the unused storage space in the server. If another customer reached out to them to set up a VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), they had to set up another desktop or a Hyper-converged Infrastructure (HCI) for it. In other words, they were not in full-control of their storage infrastructure and were struggling with the “fixed hardware model”.

“We were providing different servers of different types based on our customer needs. Even if we had unused space in a server, once it was created we needed to allocate a different server for a different type of application. You can imagine this created an expensive and rather large data center; not to mention it was incredibly difficult to manage and keep track of.” – noted Deborah, the data center administrator of the hosting company.

Solution

StoneFly offered the customer StoneFly’s software-defined, hardware agnostic storage virtualization software called SCVM (Storage Concentrator Virtual Machine). Stonefly’s SCVM is an enterprise-level software that allows users to configure their virtual Network Attached Storage (NAS) and virtual Storage Area Network (SAN) on available and unused space. As a Software Defined Storage (SDS) solution, Stonefly’s SCVM is hardware agnostic making it compatible with a number of servers and hardware. It could be deployed as a Virtual Machine (VM) on most mainstream hypervisors including VMware, Hyper-V and Citrix.

Results

Stonefly’s solution was able to transform everyday business for the hosting company. They were able to fully utilize their data center infrastructure and repurpose unused storage space to allocate storage resources for new clients. Stonefly’s SCVM software was able to reduce the overall footprint of the data center and the cost of data storage by 60%.

“StoneFly really put us back in control of our infrastructure. We were able to control provisioned available storage space the way we needed it and that changed our entire experience and the way we did things” said Deborah, the data center administrator of the hosting company.

Unified NAS, SAN & Object Storage in a Server

Instead of setting up dedicated servers for different types of storage, the hosting company was able to create virtual unified NAS and SAN storage on a single server. This enabled them to fully utilize available storage resources before creating new ones. Therefore, the data center footprint was effectively reduced and consequently they experienced better Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investments (ROIs).

Easily Scalable Provisioned Virtual Storage Appliances

Unlike traditional storage infrastructure, the provisioned virtual storage appliances made adding new clients and storage administration considerably easier. Instead of using multiple tools to manage different NAS, SAN and Hyper-converged servers, SCVM enables the hosting company to manage all of their storage resources effortlessly by using a single centralized management interface. This allows users to add more storage space capacity or repurpose unused dedicated storage space with a few clicks. Provisioned storage volumes can be scaled up or down quickly when needed.

“When we used to get requests for more storage, it used to be a long process that needed network switches, more hardware and storage drives. Now, we simply expand with a few clicks using the storage capacity we already have. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it’s quick too. Our customers are very satisfied with their experience” said John, the Chief Technology Officer for the hosting company.

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Simplified Data Management

Instead of using multiple tools to manage different NAS, SAN and Hyperconverged servers, SCVM enables the hosting company to manage all of their storage resources using a single centralized management interface.