StorPool's software, also called StorPool, has helped cloud host ToggleBox to improve its service to customers at a lower cost: by providing service speeds of up to 25 times faster and reducing running costs by a third. StorPool also helps ToggleBox to maintain 100 per cent uptime, and optimises costs over the entire IT stack.
ToggleBox provides customisable high-speed cloud hosting on private cloud servers, smart servers and hybrid cloud servers. ToggleBox’s virtual data centres and easy-to-use dashboards give its customers the freedom to constantly monitor usage, customise plans and keeps costs affordable. Its scalable resources are ready to match customers’ changing requirements.
ToggleBox’s distributed storage system consists of a cluster of 40 servers. The network is based on redundant 10Gbit Ethernet. The cloud provider started to look for a new storage product when its existing Nimble storage SAN ran into trouble: IO bottlenecks meant the whole storage system slowed down, downtime was affecting customer experience and satisfaction, and customers’ CPU upgrades were becoming costly.
ToggleBox thoroughly researched distributed storage options, including SANs and all-flash arrays from SolidFire. StorPool’s block-storage software proved to be the best solution with the highest performance, efficiency, scalability and simplicity. The ability to scale out StorPool’s solution made it a very flexible option: allowing ToggleBox to start small, adding capacity and performance with more drives and servers as and when they’re needed.
Since implementing StorPool, ToggleBox has seen both technical and business benefits. Increased IOPS with write performance two times faster and read performance up to 50 times faster, plus 100 per cent uptime, means ToggleBox’s entire IT infrastructure is running more efficiently. In business terms StorPool has helped ToggleBox to provide a faster, more reliable service to its customers and ToggleBox can operate at higher margins. The new software-defined storage solution has reduced complexity – it is easy to set-up, integrate and use. No additional staff are required.
StorPool was established in 2011. Its fast, efficient software-defined storage is designed with maximum ROI and user satisfaction in mind. Moving away from traditional SAN storage, StorPool’s intelligent software-defined block storage technology allows service providers to run data storage on standard x86 servers. The software is installed on each server and aggregates the performance and capacity of all the drives into a single shared pool of block storage, distributed between all servers.
Intelligent enterprise-grade storage features like thin provisioning, snapshots and clones, and Quality of Service are encouraging customers to choose StorPool over high-end traditional SAN and all-flash / all-SSD arrays.
ToggleBox owner, Matt Ayres, says: “StorPool has a unique technology – it’s simple, fast and powerful. Setting up was straightforward and the software has made such a difference to our day-to-day business. We don’t have to worry about downtime and bottlenecks. Everything works smoothly, which is just what our customers need. We can be confident about the future too, knowing that it’s possible to scale out when we need to, and all at a competitive price.”
StorPool CEO, Boyan Ivanov, adds: “Every organisation needs storage, but when we speak to potential customers we always hear how expensive it is, how difficult it can be to manage and how hard it is to scale. So StorPool is built differently to other solutions. We’ve put our emphasis on cost efficiency, ease-of-use and scalability – and we do that with accelerated, highly-reliable performance. Our work with ToggleBox shows how these things together can make a real difference to the way a business runs, and how it can make their customers happier too.”
