Organization

A hosting company, based in New Jersey, with service offerings 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 dealt with a wide range of use-cases for their customers. In order to facilitate different customers, they had to provision different types of storage and compute servers. With legacy infrastructure, this was usually done by setting up dedicated servers or desktops. This process was time consuming, usually very expensive, and it created storage silos that were huge in volume and complex to manage.

Legacy infrastructure made their job and business difficult. If they needed to provision new file storage and sharing server for a new user, they had to setup a dedicated or shared server. Once provisioned, they were unable to use the unused storage space in the server.

If another customer reached out to them to setup a VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), they had to setup another desktop or a Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) for it.

In other words, they were not fully in control of their storage infrastructure and were struggling with the “fixed hardware model”.

“We were managing different servers for different types of customer needs. Even if we had unused space in a server, once it was provisioned we needed a different one for a different type of application. You can imagine this created an expensive and rather large data center; not to mention the data management challenges” – noted Deborah, the data center administrator of the hosting company.

Solution

StoneFly SCVM – software-defined, hardware agnostic storage virtualization software. The SCVM simplifies data management for data center owners by facilitating virtual storage provisioning on integrated servers.

With the SCVM virtual storage appliance, users can provision virtual NAS, virtual SAN, and unified virtual NAS, SAN and object storage on on-premises hyperconverged infrastructure, offsite servers, or in the cloud.

Learn more about StoneFly SCVM

Results

Our solutions transformed everyday business for the hosting company. They were able to fully utilize their data center infrastructure and repurpose unused space to provision storage resources for new clients.

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

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 provision virtual unified NAS and SAN storage on a single server. This enabled them to fully utilize available storage resources before getting 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 scalability look easy.

“When we used to get requests for more storage, it was 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 love the experience” said John, the Chief Technology Officer for the hosting company.

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.