1. What do you do?

Everything needed, sometimes beyond what I’ve imagined I’d be able to.

2. What keeps you up at night?

Usually something of interest. Or if I were “in the zone” and forgot to get out. Or a nice read. Or quality time with friends and family. Or inevitably when an issue arises with some of our customers.

3. What do you think of “software-defined storage” technology? Do you consider it the future of storage?

SDS is the natural (r)evolution of the way we store data in the datacenter. It is still new and proven only amongst people who have seen the benefits.

4. Who, in your eyes, are the early adopters of this new generation of software-defined technology?

The brave ones. 🙂 Even proven for the handful of companies that are using SDS in production it is still considered as young and unproven solution, which is probably normal.

5. Why did you decide to join StorPool?

It was a big challenge for me. I met one of the founders on an Open Source conference and found myself very inspired by his talk. It took some more time to prove that I’ll be up to this challenge.

6. What is your story with StorPool?

At the first few months I was like a toddler in a place full of jedy. Which was a greatly inspiring environment for a person willing to get deeper into the woods. The challenges are always complex, the work on most of them is autonomous and occupy the mind. And there is always a relationship between effort and reward – for everything we put in, we get something out – faster results, happier customers, less issues, greater knowledge. And most importantly you could always see the fruits of something when you look at how it was solved. This is the definition for a meaningful work according to some people of our time.

7. What makes StorPool different from other vendors?

We have a real product, that is solving real problems for thousands of end users. That alone is probably enough to distinguish us from most of the vendors in the field.

8. How is StorPool beneficial to customers in your opinion?

High performance and reliability at a very reasonable price. I was about to say that the good support is also an advantage for our customers. Even better than this is the lack of need for support, which I believe is true most of the time.

9. How do you see the storage industry in 5 years? Are there any new trends that will have an important impact in the near future?

In 5 years the fastest and most expensive SSDs now will probably be widely used. Apart from that there will probably be much more cost effective SSDs, that would probably are going to be used for the redundant copies instead of hard drives due to the free fall of prices and the introduction of technologies, such as 3D NAND flash today. Also at this point technologies like ReRAM, Phase Change Memory (PCM) or some other solid-state solution might pose a challenge to flash memory and shift the limits elsewhere in the stack.

10. Where do you see StorPool in 5 years?

A global company with thousands of petabytes of customer data in management.

11. What is your advice for companies building their long term strategies now?

Start with small steps at a time and never miss an opportunity to go beyond what is expected from you. At least this is something we have never regretted for.

12. Any final remarks?

Work hard, but do not forget to play hard as well. 🙂

Todor Tanev, Senior System Administrator at StorPool