Since we implemented StarWind Virtual SAN, we have found it easy to deploy, update, and maintain a service that is highly available from end to end. We know that we are protected against unexpected failures, and that StarWind support is there for us if any difficulties arise.
Neal Coffey, VoicePulse System Administrator
PROBLEM
The VoicePulse infrastructure relies on a mix of technologies, from DNS and web servers to SQL servers and custom call routing applications, all running on a mix of Windows and Linux servers. To ensure these services continue to scale into the future, we knew we needed to virtualize, and we chose to deploy both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere. We needed a storage solution that was proven to work well with both.
The entire infrastructure needs to be resilient against hardware and service failures. Any problem with performance or availability would be immediately noticed by our customers, from delays in calling and dialing to a possible loss of service. On an application level this redundancy is easy to provide with host-based clustering and High Availability virtualization features. However, these solutions are dependent on highly available – and high performance – shared storage.
Rather than choose a SAN built on expensive and proprietary hardware, we desired an affordable solution that our existing administrators would be comfortable supporting and maintaining. We also needed a solution with a proven track record and dedicated support.
SOLUTION
StarWind Virtual SAN solution met all of our requirements in terms of support, affordability, reliability, and performance. The StarWind support team has experience with both Hyper-V and ESX virtualization, and they were easy to work with in getting both of these environments up and running. Since the solution is built on standard hardware and software, VoicePulse’s existing administration team found it easy to deploy, configure and maintain. This also made it easy to plug into existing monitoring processes.
With performance and reliability as our top concerns, we ran our test environment through several tests to ensure StarWind Virtual SAN would keep up. In terms of performance, we found the disks themselves were the only limit, with StarWind software providing access as quickly as the hardware would let it. Reliability was also proven, as the loss of one StarWind server went virtually unnoticed by the rest of our infrastructure, with the second server picking up seamlessly.
RESULTS
Since we implemented StarWind Virtual SAN, we have found it easy to deploy, update, and maintain a service that is highly available from end to end. We know that we are protected against unexpected failures, and that StarWind support is there for us if any difficulties arise. This gives us the confidence we need to continue the VoicePulse promise of performance and reliability to our customers.
About the Company
Since 2003, we at VoicePulse have made our mission to provide a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service that delivers an affordable, feature-rich alternative to the local phone company. VoicePulse for Business has surpassed its competitors in quality, support, and reliability, and has shown a commitment to support for open-source telephony products. VoicePulse Residential service offers a feature-rich phone service without surprises or hidden fees. Both services enjoy US-based phone and email support. To ensure our infrastructure can continue to support modern features and a growing customer base, we are developing a virtualized environment to provide our next generation of services.
www.voicepulse.com
Industry
Communications, Voice-over-IP services
Environment
Hyper-V and ESX environments