The 21st major version of StorPool Storage’s main storage platform has been released. According to StorPool itself, it brings with it new features and capabilities, some of which have never been offered by any block storage vendor before, such as improved cloud management integration, faster and more effective erasure coding, and increased data efficiency.
With “up to half the hardware cost per useable terabyte,” the company’s next-generation software platform would turn ordinary hardware into fast, highly accessible, and scalable storage systems. By implementing a single storage system to support all workloads and link all cloud platforms, enterprises can simplify their overall IT operations with StorPool by taking a “hands-off approach” to storage infrastructure.
With this latest update, StorPool brings significant enhancements to its data security, effectiveness, accessibility, and compatibility knowledge. The special use of erasure coding, which guards against drive failure or corruption with almost little effect on read/write speed, is foremost among the highlights of v21’s enhancements.
Four major features are provided by StorPool’s Erasure Coding implementation when it is installed on a minimum of five all-NVMe storage servers:
- Cross-Node Data Protection – data is safeguarded across servers using two parity objects, allowing for the failure of any two servers while maintaining data security and accessibility
- Per-Volume Policy Management – volumes may be live converted between data protection strategies on a per-volume basis and protected using either triple replication or erasure coding.
- Delayed Batch-Encoding – To minimize the effect on user I/O latency and significantly decrease data processing overhead, incoming data is first written in three copies before being encoded in bulk.
- Always-On Operations – Up to two storage nodes can be rebooted or brought down for maintenance while the entire storage system remains running with all data remaining available.
“Delivering high-performance erasure coding on scale-out primary block storage that protects against multiple concurrent drive and node failures is genius,” said Marc Staimer, President, Dragon Slayer Consulting. “Up to two storage nodes can be rebooted or brought down for maintenance while the entire storage system remains running with all data remaining available. It makes multiple concurrent drive or node failures a ‘non-event’ with nominal to no performance impact while accelerating data rebuilds – not drive rebuilds – by orders of magnitude.”
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Erasure Coding
With the most recent StorPool offering’s new Erasure Coding features, users may now choose a more detailed data protection plan for every workload, appropriately sizing the data footprint for each unique use case. Customers may implement cross-rack Erasure Coding in large-scale deployments to guarantee the survival of failure from up to two racks and obtain data efficiency benefits for their storage systems.
Among the other significant improvements included in the v21 version of StorPool Storage are:
- Enhanced iSCSI Scalability – This feature, which is particularly helpful for large-scale installations, enables users to export up to 1000 iSCSI targets per node
- CloudStack Plug-In Improvements – This feature makes it easier to migrate compute hosts live by supporting CloudStack’s partial zone-wide storage and volume encryption
- Enhancements to the OpenNebula Add-On – It now facilitates multi-cluster deployments, in which many StorPool sub-clusters function as a single, massive main storage system with a common global namespace
- Improvements to the OpenStack Cinder Driver – It makes it simpler to create and maintain StorPool Storage clusters, which support Canonical Charmed OpenStack and OpenStack instances that are controlled by kolla-ansible
- Deep Integration with Proxmox Virtual Environment – By integrating Proxmox VE, businesses can take advantage of end-to-end automation, freeing up their IT personnel to work on strategic initiatives instead of maintaining discrete IT stack components
- Greater Software and Hardware Compatibility – More operating systems and hardware have been verified, making it simpler to install StorPool Storage in customers’ chosen settings
For enhanced business continuity, the organization has also added its StorPool VolumeCare backup & disaster recovery capability on every management node in the cluster. Only the instance on the current management node is actively carrying out snapshot operations; VolumeCare is constantly operating in all of the management nodes. For large backup clusters, a related innovation offers significant performance gains.
“The one thing that always impresses me about StorPool Storage is their commitment to constantly making it an even better solution rather than resting on their laurels in having built a superior primary storage solution in the first place,” said Kevin Schouwenaar, Technical Director at Hosted. “Just the addition of Erasure Coding provides us the protection we need as data sets continue to grow without the overhead or limitations of triple replication or RAID1.”
Enhancing Business Continuity
StorPool Storage is intended for applications requiring the lowest possible latency and maximum dependability. It makes it possible to install high-performance, linearly scalable main storage systems on industry-standard hardware to meet the data management and storage requirements of large-scale clouds.
Businesses can connect a single storage system to all of their cloud platforms with StorPool and benefit from its completely “hands-off approach” to storage infrastructure, which streamlines IT operations. Each storage system is designed, deployed, tuned, monitored, and maintained by the StorPool team to ensure that end users get quick and dependable services while the tech teams of its clients focus their efforts on initiatives meant to expand their businesses.
“Since developing our storage platform from the ground up in the years following 2012, we continue to push the limits of what’s possible in storage with each new version of StorPool Storage,” said Boyan Ivanov, CEO of StorPool. “Even after all these years, the fundamental features are still the same: software that is more affordable so that our clients can keep larger profit margins, faster and more effective, simpler, and smarter. Version 21 pushes the envelope once further by enhancing business continuity, providing improved data security with Erasure Coding, and guaranteeing interoperability with the newest technology. When you can maximize the total cost of ownership of your data center by using cutting-edge data storage that is maintained and constructed for you, why choose other options?”
