With SANsymphony, buying storage is yesterday

However, conventional storages have a problem: they are very expensive to purchase and to operate. Costly maintenance contracts alone with around 25-30% of the initial investment costs are the rule. In addition, these systems are often technologically outdated and new features are usually sought in vain. Functions that were already available 20 years ago are occasionally given a new name, but are usually just old wine in new bottles.

We will go into the basics of software-defined storage in the following blog posts: The Double Trilemma of Virtual Storage Systems and VMware vSphere: Virtualisation Basics.

With the SANsymphony product from the manufacturer DataCore, these requirements are easily met. This is a storage virtualisation technology that bundles all storage devices (local and distributed) and manages them centrally. This leads to:

• Reduction of storage-relevant downtimes of the IT environments to quasi 0%.
• Three to six-fold increase in performance compared to conventional storages
• Savings of over 45% of costs
• Balanced capacity and load distribution
• Highest flexibility through arbitrary expansion of manufacturer-independent systems
• Location-independent access to all data
• Intelligent and automated distribution of data

In addition, companies can configure their software-defined storage exactly as they need it:

• Storage Virtualisation: Abstraction of Traditional SAN Architecture
• Converged: Combines local and distributed storage into one overall system
• Hyperconverged: Bundles local storage and HCI servers into a highly available virtual storage pool
• Hybrid-converged: Any combination of storage virtualisation, converted and hyperconverged deployments.

If companies opt for a SANsmphony package from selected DataCore partners, they receive an active-mirrored DataCore storage cluster including state-of-the-art server hardware, the fastest data carriers (NVME SSDs), the necessary licences and professional maintenance service and support. Billing is usually based on a fixed monthly price per GB bundle of storage volume. Thanks to the virtual storage system, customers can start small and simply add more volume as their storage consumption increases. In contrast, entrepreneurs with conventional storage systems have to commit to a storage volume for years in advance without knowing whether the bill will add up in the end.

Conventional storage systems are relatively rigid - companies usually only notice the effects of extensions or a change when they are in live mode. Through DataCore-as-a-Service, selected partners provide more than just modern storage solutions. Set-up and support are handled by experienced DataCore partners who know their customers' systems inside out. They also monitor the systems to identify and solve problems directly. This also means that customers are informed at an early stage if they run out of memory, so that they can easily add an extension at the click of a button. Test systems can be provided in advance for interested parties to test and compare the solutions for their own needs. The services include storage snapshots, encrypted virtual data carriers, replications & site recovery scenarios on-premise or in the cloud.