Share IT Limited expands the range of its IT services thanks to enhancing a production environment with StarWind

PUBLISHED/UPDATED: September 6th, 2021

Choosing StarWind meant that we finally had a solution that
provided us with HA storage.

Managing Director

PROBLEM

Before StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) deployment, Share IT Limited had physical HP servers and Cisco networks. Whilst nearly all the company’s infrastructure is highly available (HA) with clustered Hyper-V and VMware hypervisors, HA networks, firewalls, and switches, its storage was always a single point of failure (SPOF). The organization needed a storage system that would complete its HA infrastructure. Historically, Share IT Limited used single-node open-source storage arrays which, whilst cost-effective, were not really suitable for use in a production environment. To make the arrays perform better, the RAM cache was often used to buffer the writes that the disks could not keep up with and cache the frequently accessed reads. The issue was that should the array suffer power loss or a crash, any data stored in RAM is lost which can cause corruption. Having a single node array, the company was also unable to patch as often as it would like due to the required scheduled downtimes and fear that the array would not come back up after the patching. Overall, there were many shortfalls that left Share IT Limited looking for a solution that it never thought it would find. The company needed a product that would replicate in real-time (synchronously) so that it could use RAM caching without the fear of power loss as the second array would also have a copy of the data. Share IT Limited needed something that would allow it to patch and maintain at a time while keeping all systems online. The company found that solution and it turned out to be the StarWind product.

SOLUTION

After testing the functionality of StarWind VSAN without investing large amounts of time and money and proving it without further ado, Share IT Limited implemented the StarWind product into its IT infrastructure. It allowed the company to create an HA storage cluster reusing its existing hardware and performing significantly faster than its previous arrays even with the synchronous replication. Now Share IT Limited can use RAM to buffer I/O without fear of losing data in the event of power failure. With StarWind VSAN, the company can patch, update, and perform routine maintenance without concern and without having to schedule downtime with the company’s customers. Currently Share IT Limited has a 2-node StarWind cluster that presents iSCSI storage to both Hyper-V and VMware clusters over a dedicated 10GbE network. Its performance and reliability have exceeded the company’s expectations considerably. With StarWind VSAN, Share IT Limited can expand as it needs with a very little learning curve, all at a reasonable price.

Share IT

About the Company

Share IT Limited is a British bespoke managed services provider that aims to provide enterprise-class systems and support to small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) without the associated costs. Its services include managed backups solutions powered by Veeam, colocation services.

Company Profile

Bespoke Managed Service Provider

Contact Person

Managing Director

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