Local Disk Storage Option for SoftLayer CloudLayer Computing

SoftLayer Technologies, Inc., in cloud, dedicated, and managed hosting, announced the expansion of its storage options for CloudLayer Computing Instances (CCI) to include local disk storage.

Available as an alternative to SoftLayer’s SAN-based CCIs, the new option brings customers the ability to choose the storage that meets their individual application and performance needs.

"Every customer is different, and needs different things from cloud," said Duke Skarda, Chief Technology Officer for SoftLayer. "That’s why we created Build Your Own Cloud, letting customers tailor the CPU power, RAM, and storage capacity of their CCIs to their application requirements. Local Disk Storage takes that even farther, bringing customers even greater control over how their cloud solutions perform."

Local Disk Storage for CloudLayer Computing is implemented as RAID Level 10, for enterprise-grade reliability and security. 25GB or 100GB Local Disks are available for primary storage, and 100GB or 200 GB Local Disks are available for additional storage. SAN-based storage continues to be available; currently the two storage options cannot be used together.

"There are inherent differences between SAN and Local Storage that give each their own advantages," said Mr. Skarda. "Since SAN-based CCIs store their data in a shared location, they will always provide faster recovery options and greater flexibility in scaling total storage capacity. But, naturally, Local Disk-based CCIs can provide faster input/output speeds, making them an even better option for storage-intensive applications and lowering total cost of operations. Now, it’s entirely up to you which benefits you’d rather leverage."