StorPool in 2018: new features, 30% lower latency and other significant improvements

2018 – a successful year for the leading distributed block storage vendor StorPool

At StorPool we are happy to share what we achieved in 2018 in the software-defined storage area. This year we continued our trend to double the company’s revenue and to be financially independent. Being strong and stable, not at the mercy of financial markets gave us the opportunity to focus on building a great product and a great company. We launched new features, improved existing ones and added new customers and partners.

StorPool 18.02

In November, we launched our newest release – 18.02. The new version of the fast distributed block storage incorporates industry-leading capabilities into the solution providing everything needed to ensure efficient, reliable and scalable storage solution for your business.

StorPool relies on its experience with hundreds of public and private clouds. We added optimal use of hyperscale leaf-spine networks, integration into the leading container orchestration platform Kubernetes, and a myriad of other improvements.

30% lower latency

StorPool 18.02 release has some 30% lower storage operations latency, compared to the previous version. We’ve achieved this by developing an accelerated mode (also known in the industry as kernel bypass).

StorPool’s performance was exceptional, but we like to push the boundaries of what’s possible. That’s why we implemented what we call “accelerated mode” for NICs. We can now complete storage operations in microseconds of latency, without sacrificing any of the advanced features of our solution, which rival a high-end SAN

Kubernetes integration

StorPool provides reliable persistent block-storage for Kubernetes. Kubernetes is an open-source project that came out of Google – a container orchestrator which has built-in support for running and managing containers, their monitoring, load balancing, and auto-scaling.

Enhanced hardware platform compatibility and ARM and POWER support

We extended our hardware support list. In this way, we enable our customers to build even more sophisticated infrastructure and storage systems on the latest generation of hardware. Some of the newly supported hardware components are:

• 4Kn drives – more information about them can be found here
• Hot-plug NVMe – making it easier to manage the infrastructure without rebooting servers
• Arm and POWER 8/9 architectures – more for our Arm support you can find out here

Support for hyperscale datacenter networks

In its 18.02 release, StorPool improved its support of routed leaf/spine datacenter networks, so to address the rising demand for hyperscale deployments. This is in addition to the simpler and proven flat Ethernet topology, which is used in small to mid-sized deployments.

StorPool Storage Monitoring and Analytics

StorPool presented an enhanced version of its storage Monitoring and Analytics Tool. If you are using StorPool storage and taking the benefits of high throughput, low latency, and great reliability, this tool will be useful to provide your system administrators with statistics and valuable information. Now, it is even better, more detailed and provides better UX.

StorPool has implemented graphs visualized with Grafana – the prime open platform for analytics and monitoring. Using it, we are able to provide our customers with insights, important statistics, and metrics for the overall performance of their storage system. In addition, all StorPool’s users can track the health and performance of their servers, volumes, disks and individual nodes.

StorPool’s deep integration now upstream in OpenStack

StorPool storage announced its native integration with OpenStack. The StorPool services are now integrated with OpenStack’s block storage (Cinder) and compute (Nova) components. This integration came out of the box with OpenStack’s Queens Release.

CloudStack integration improvements and deep dive in the community

The capable CloudStack storage solutions are few. Cloud providers, MSPs, and Enterprises benefit from StorPool together with CloudStack in order to accelerate their applications while increasing the ROI (Return on Investment) of their IT. Combined with its efficiency, scalability, and reliability, StorPool can boost the performance of your CloudStack infrastructure and help you to achieve superb end-user experience.

Тhis year StorPool dived deep in the CloudStack community by joining a series of events of the community. We did great talks, which were well-accepted by the CloudStack user group and the attendees at the ApacheCon in Montreal.

Supporting OpenNebula, CloudStack and OpenStack communities

At StorPool we believe that the close partnership with providers of hardware, components, and cloud management platform is the key to providing outstanding service and knowing better our customers’ needs. For this reason, we visit regularly community events, expos, and fairs, where we can make new partnerships and friendships.

More for our software-defined storage tour you can see here.

StorPool endorsed by Hosting Advice

This year Hosting Advice endorsed StorPool’s product as being one of the fastest and most efficient distributed storage software available on the market. The article takes a deeper look at StorPool’s past accomplishments, as well as the goals set for the new year: “to deliver better performance and reliability at an affordable price point.”

Thank you all for joining us in 2018 in our effort to provide the fastest and most reliable storage solution! We do the best for you – to enhance your business and open new opportunities!