The Unified Storage provides you with an impressive amount of disk storage space, directly connected to your Virtual LAN. The service is equivalent, as far as functions go, to any SAN or NAS hardware device.
With the Unified Storage service you can archive large quantities of resources and use them for the Cloud Servers Pro that are connected to the same virtual network, just like a shared disk.
With the Unified Storage you can also overcome the limitation of the 2 TB of disk space per Cloud Server Pro.
Here are some examples of how the Unified Storage can be used:
- Unified Storage used as NAS: offers volume accessed through NFS (Linux) or CIFS (Windows), and provides storage which can be shared between multiple Cloud Servers, ideal for archiving and sharing data. It can easily be used when, in cases of balanced infrastructures, you need to have a common layer for archiving data (for example a portal or a web application balanced between multiple Cloud Servers Pro).
- Unified Storage used as iSCSI: offers the possibility to have RAW access to a LUN (Logical Unit Number) through iSCSI protocol, this system is especially recommended for cases where clustering is required (for example SQL Server in Clustering).
In both cases listed above, the Unified Storage can be expanded at any time without losing any data, in a totally safe and transparent manner.
Using a Unified Storage allows you to centralize your data archive, and as it’s a hardware storage, significantly improve performances compared to equivalent virtual systems. Furthermore with the Unified Storage you get a high level of guarantee and security for your data: the system in fact includes two twin storages, replicated one onto the other in synchronous mode. Any failure is automatically dealt with by the system in total transparency, according to maximum Business Continuity standards.
To meet all types of needs, when creating a Unified Storage, it is possible to choose the protocol you wish to use between NFS, CIFS and iSCSI. In this last case you will need to specify the IQN generated by the Cloud Servers Pro you wish to connect.
As for the scalability of your infrastructure, at any time you can both increase the storage capacity up to a maximum of 5000GB for each Unified Storage unit, and increase the number of Unified Storages found in the same network.
