“Software Defined Storage” is one of the latest buzz words in the industry, and everyone wants to jump on board. The term has been defined many ways, however the most standard definition is a storage solution that abstracts services from physical storage hardware. FalconStor has been doing this successfully for many years. Features include Replication, Snapshots, and Continuous Data Protection among many others. Almost every storage product is trying to implement these as either part of their base storage product, or as a paid feature upgrade.
It is a value add for storage vendors to have these features available, even if a buyer’s initial intention with a product is not to use them. It is a mistake to assume that all of these added feature implementations are equally capable. In truth, many of these features are bolt on extras that are immature at best compared to the strength of the refined solutions in FalconStor.
One thing that storage products will never be able to duplicate that FalconStor does so well is interoperability. FalconStor makes storage a commodity and presents it to clients in a single pane of glass interface. It gives you the ability to mirror storage at the LUN level between different SANs, even those of different branding. Migration of data from one platform to another is also simplified. Replication can happen locally or across great distances to same or dissimilar storage hardware, and the FalconStor replication engine with patented Microscan technology does this in a way that is superior to built-in same-vendor replication by improving the precision of change detection. These features can also bring new life to older hardware.
The single pane of glass interface in FalconStor can dramatically cut down on the amount of effort a storage administrator has to put in on a daily basis. For businesses too small to have a dedicated storage administrator, an installed FalconStor solution allows an IT administrator to perform normally complex storage tasks from a simple interface with very little effort and time. For larger businesses, this can reduce the number of administrators needed as well as the amount of time needed to resolve requests.
If a flashy advertisement about a new software defined storage product has caught your eye, compare it to the industry leader FalconStor before making a decision. Chi Corporation has extensive experience with FalconStor and can help design and recommend a solution that meets your needs.
Paul Comfort
Senior Systems Engineer
Chi Corporation
@PCComf
