FalconStor Software-Defined Storage Platform Adds End-to-End Predictive Analytics

FalconStor Software Inc. further strengthened its FreeStor converged, hardware-agnostic, software-defined storage and data services platform with the introduction of intelligent predictive analytics that uniquely offers insight across heterogeneous storage environments.

This enhancement empowers users with the ability to take action, both proactively and reactively, as needed to better manage and monitor business-critical data end to end.

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FreeStor is a software-defined storage platform that gives customers the power to seamlessly migrate, recover, protect and deduplicate data – on or off the cloud – without tying their business to specific hardware, networks or protocols. FreeStor’s Intelligent Abstraction Layer enables the free flow of data and common services between the front end and back end, regardless of environment or location. Intelligent Abstraction virtualizes both existing and future storage for a more efficient and consolidated storage infrastructure. Unlike array-based analytics, FreeStor’s Intelligent Predictive Analytics provides real-time and historical analytics across heterogeneous storage systems to better manage capacity, performance, and availability. By combining Intelligent Abstraction with Predictive Analytics, users are able to take intelligent action based on real-time information to optimize and maintain their storage environment from a single pane of glass regardless of storage vendor or location.

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“FreeStor Analytics optimizes daily work in a way no other solution does. It is the answer to today’s challenges of our service provider business: Time to market, scalability, and state-of-the-art centralized management, resource prediction and API for external cloud tools or self-developed scripts,” said Thomas Blank, cloud and data center services, Fujitsu TDS GmbH. “Together with its scalable and robust storage virtualization engine, FreeStor provides the flexibility our customers need to successfully drive their business.“

“FreeStor solves a problem that SRM and application performance monitoring tools do not – it reveals actionable information end-to-end across the storage infrastructure,” said Marc Staimer, president/CDS, Dragon Slayer Consulting. “Its intuitive analytics exposes performance bottlenecks quickly, providing faster root cause resolution and happier users.“

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Capturing and monitoring what is happening across the infrastructure, FreeStor’s heterogeneous software-defined approach ensures that users get holistic, accurate views across the entire storage environment for real-time insight and action. It provides unified analysis at global and granular levels with user-definable views, reports and smart rules that allow IT organizations to see exactly what they need to see, tailored to their business and environment. REST APIs ensure that information is delivered when and where it is needed.

“Some vendors offer reporting tools with their solutions, but either the information they provide is exclusive to that particular solution or it leaves it up to the user to figure out what the reports mean before real action can be taken,” said Sandor Orban, technical lead, infrastructure services, Sunrise Communications AG. “FreeStor’s analytics not only cover our entire storage infrastructure, regardless of whose equipment we are using, but it helps us to see where we are at and where we are going so that we can take the appropriate action before trouble hits. This is invaluable since downtime is unacceptable. Having predictive analytics in addition to the optimization, protection, availability, and migration functionality of FreeStor makes it a fundamental element as far as implementing it in our data centers.“

Latest version of FreeStor includes following features:

• Centralized monitoring, analytics, reporting and provisioning across multiple storage servers

• New management GUI which simplifies storage management and improves usability

• Historical and real-time trends and reports for performance, health and inventory

• Advanced analytics for real-time insights and informed decisions

• Real-time performance, health and inventory monitoring end to end; from connected hosts, to virtual LUNs, to the storage pool to physical disks

• Service-level monitoring through both proactive and reactive smart rules and alerts

• Personalized, customizable dashboards for complete flexibility for storage administrators

• Native iPhone/Android applications for anytime and anywhere monitoring

• OpenStack Cinder driver

• SAP HANA certification

“Now is the time for a new, comprehensive approach to overcoming the real-world infrastructure and data management challenges facing enterprises, MSPs and CSPs today,” said Gary Quinn, president and CEO, FalconStor. “FreeStor’s Intelligent Abstraction makes current and future storage more efficient and available, allowing users to better manage capacity, performance, and availability across the entire infrastructure. Combined with FreeStor’s protection, deduplication, recovery and migration capabilities, users can take intelligent action to optimize and maintain their storage environments from a single dashboard, regardless of storage vendor or location. We believe these abilities make FreeStor the best business option for IT departments looking to regain control of their data and the costs associated with managing and storing it.“

What customers are saying about FreeStor:
Gabriel Enzo Gagliardi, CEO, Imptech SA: “The FreeStor platform provides our customers with an intelligent and flexible technology layer that enables common, efficient, and cost-effective storage services and centralized management of storage resources across an organization.”

Athanasios Vacopoulos, owner, C&C Computacao e Communicacao Ltda: “When you have something complex, it will be frustrating to use when you need it. What might take days to restore a couple of terabytes of data from our old storage would only take a couple of minutes to restore with FreeStor. I think FreeStor is the right way to go.”

Scott Harris, VP, services, Egnera, Inc.: “FreeStor is the first real entry, in my opinion, into the service provider realm…FreeStor is an integral part of the Xterity brand, and it’s the only DR solution we offer. We feel that it’s a unique fit and allows us to address a unique market need.”

Luis Urzua, manager, digital solutions, Telefonica Empresas Chile SA: “With FreeStor, we are able to offer a converged storage ecosystem with a full suite of services. This is how Telefonica can help companies become intelligent enterprises, with collaborative tools that boost the creativity of employees through talent empowerment.”