StorPool unveils latest update, adds CloudStack support

Software-defined storage company StorPool has launched an upgraded version of its block storage system, which now integrates with CloudStack, the Apache software for public and private Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds.

According to the company, the new version also brings other improvements including lower CPU usage, up to 30 percent more IOPS, increasing data capacity saving of up to 15 percent, and increased scalability to beyond 1PB.

Aimed at service providers, enterprises, and cloud builders, Storpool aggregates the capacity of standard x86 servers into a single shared pool of block storage.

It creates a single pool of data storage that allow companies to use "the full capacity and performance of a set of commodity drives", the company says.

Along with CloudStack integration, Storpool offers support for OpenStack, OnApp, Docker, and Linux LVM and LXC.

StorPool says it has also increased scalability to 20,000 volumes and snapshots per cluster and support for clusters up to 1PB in size in 30TB volumes. According to the company, scrubbing is done to ensure data saved on physical drives is not corruptible by silent hardware errors, and the SSDs are trimmed to remove errors.

What are the target markets for StorPool? "We target based on use-case", said StorPool CEO, Boyan Ivanov. "Companies that build public or private clouds [including] enterprises and SMEs, service providers along with IaaS/PaaS, managed service providers, telecoms and hosting companies."

StorPool manages many and varied storage systems for customers, so what performance indicators do they use to estimate usage?

"It depends on the hardware the customer has," said Ivanov. "The magical thing about StorPool is that our software aggregates the performance from many drives (hard disks and/or SSDs) into one large pool of capacity and performance.

"So we can estimate what performance a customer can achieve from a particular hardware set-up. We will be limited to the performance available in the underlying hardware in the first place, but the advantage of using a distributed storage solution is that customers can add capacity and performance on the fly, just one drive at a time."

Further reading

• Simplicity versus complexity: How Booking.com tackles storage
• Seagate to cut 1,600 jobs amid weak demand
• Backblaze B2: Dirt-cheap cloud storage for business