Cloud builders worldwide – Managed Services Providers, Hosting Services Providers, Cloud Services Providers, Enterprises, and SaaS Vendors – are always seeking ways to optimize the architecture and cost of their public and private cloud deployments. With Apache CloudStack and StorPool Storage, they can deploy a highly automated cloud that delivers the application performance and reliability their users need while easily addressing changes in user requirements over the long term.

The new Solution Brief developed by the Apache CloudStack Community and StorPool aids cloud and storage architects, consultants, administrators, and field practitioners in the design and deployment of reliable, easy-to-manage, and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure based on Apache CloudStack working with KVM hosts and StorPool Storage.

StorPool’s Integration with Apache CloudStack

StorPool Storage volume management is integrated with Apache CloudStack to allow seamless use of the capabilities of the StorPool Storage system through the CloudStack GUI, CLI, and API interfaces. With the integration, the features available in StorPool get inherited by each cloud deployed with StorPool Storage – enabling cloned provisioning, instant snapshots, thin provisioning, and backup, disaster recovery, and Quality of Service (QoS) policies per virtual disk or virtual machine (VM). Thanks to the way StorPool works, VM provisioning is nearly instantaneous, and data placement policies and other settings can be changed in-flight to address changes in user requirements.

The end result of the deep integration between the two systems is that there is no need to manage the storage system directly because all the interactions between CloudStack and StorPool are automated. For example, creating a virtual disk in CloudStack directly triggers the creation of a volume in StorPool. Another example is cloned provisioning – when provisioning a new V- based on a CloudStack template, StorPool clones the template to create a new volume and avoids unnecessary data duplication. At scale, this feature has a significant impact on the cloud’s efficiency and significantly optimizes the cost of the storage system.

Benefits of a Joint Deployment with CloudStack and StorPool Storage

The integration between Apache CloudStack and StorPool Storage results in several business and technical benefits.

Business Benefits:

• Always online
• End-to-end automation
• Operational flexibility
• Component interoperability
• Effective hardware lifecycle management

Technical Benefits:

• Simplified operations
• Faster deployment with reduced technological risk and shorter time to market
• Reduced outages caused by human errors
• Shared continuous storage space for all hosts in a zone
• Independent scaling of the compute and storage resources
• Fast live migration of VMs from any to any host without data movement
• Resilience to hardware failures as data integrity is maintained upon failure of a drive, storage node, host, or even an entire pod.
• All storage operations are automated, eliminating storage administration tasks like volume management, capacity management, etc.

This Apache CloudStack and StorPool Solution Brief is designed to answer the main needs of cloud builders:
• Provide uninterrupted services
• Protect user data from loss in case of hardware failures and catastrophic events
• Ensure high and consistent performance adequate for demanding applications
•Simplify the daily operations tasks and eliminate maintenance downtime
•Scale easily with increasing demand

About StorPool Storage

StorPool Storage is a primary storage platform designed to be the ideal foundation for high-performance public and private clouds. It is the easiest way to convert sets of commercial off-the-shelf servers with standard storage drives and network devices into high-performance, linearly scalable primary storage systems.
StorPool Storage systems are ideal for storing and managing the data of workloads that demand extreme reliability and low latency – databases, web servers, virtual desktops, real-time analytics, and other mission-critical software. Compared to traditional SANs, all-flash arrays, or other storage software, StorPool Storage is faster, more reliable, and scalable due to its distributed architecture. StorPool is designed from the ground up to provide cloud builders with the fastest and most resource-efficient storage software on the market.

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Download a step-by-step guide to migrate your existing vSphere environment to a robust IaaS cloud environment based on Apache CloudStack and the KVM Hypervisor, ensuring a smooth, low-friction migration journey.