StarWind is the best storage product I have ever
used! It satisfies and exceeds requirements.
Dean Mueller, IT Admin
PROBLEM
Having many offices in many cities across Western Canada, Jan-Pro Calgary made a decision to build its own data center to support all the offices. However, being an SMB company, it did not have much money to go to HP or DELL to build a data center. So, the company created a completely redundant 2-node Hyper-V failover cluster with failover shared storage based on a shoestring budget of used servers, server rack, and uninterruptible power sources. Before StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) deployment, Jan-Pro Calgary had Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2011 running on HP Proliant DL360 G5. However, the company was unable to accomplish the shared storage redundancy part as the built-in Microsoft software wouldn’t allow it to share storage local to the server. This is where StarWind came in.
SOLUTION
Jan-Pro Calgary has chosen StarWind VSAN because it allowed the company’s 2-node failover cluster to be redundant on both the host as well as storage. It was the only cost-effective solution that the organization could find. Every other solution was cost-prohibitive or too questionable to be a viable stable product. The StarWind product allowed Jan-Pro Calgary to get this project across the finish line keeping all its goals for the build intact and without needing to double the hardware costs. Thanks to StarWind, the company has saved about $20,000. StarWind VSAN operation speaks for itself. Last year the company had a 2 drive HDD failure on one of the configured RAID 5 storage servers. Within a week the server was dead, although this did not affect production at all. After purchasing new HDDs, rebuilding the server, setting up StarWind, and replicating, the system is stable ever since. In the future, Jan-Pro Calgary plans to expand its disk system and continue its path with StarWind.
About the Company
Jan-Pro Calgary is a Canadian commercial cleaning and disinfection service company based in Alberta.
Company Profile
Facilities Services
Contact Person
Dean Mueller, IT Admin