Winthrop University Deploys Gridstore

Gridstore, Inc. announced that Winthrop
University, a nationally accredited college, has implemented the Grid to
accelerate its disk-to-disk backup operations, increase scalability and
eliminate the need to over-provision storage resources.

Unlike traditional one-size-fits-all storage that results in wasted storage
resources and compromised application performance, the Grid delivers custom-fit
storage that self-optimizes to each application or VM across both virtual and
physical environments.

Winthrop manages a centralized storage infrastructure that includes over 100
Windows and Linux servers. Using a mix of DAS, NAS and SAN resources, the
college was finding that storage limitations were negatively impacting
application performance and reliability, as well as eliminating flexibility for
future expansion. Its DAS was inflexible, its NAS was inefficient to scale and
created islands of storage to manage, and its SAN solutions’ costs were
skyrocketing.

After researching its options, Winthrop University selected Gridstore’s
optimized storage solution, the Grid. It is a software-defined storage that
combines patented Server-Side Virtual Controller (SVC) technology with a grid architecture. The Grid utilizes massively parallel I/O and
parallel processing that grows more powerful as it grows larger. Now Winthrop
can independently scale capacity, I/O and processing to meet its specific
requirements by attaching affordable storage nodes to its network – at
one-third the cost of its existing SAN infrastructure.

"Once we began to look for new
storage solutions to upgrade our SAN and NAS environment, we heard about
Gridstore," said James Hammond, associate VP for IT, Winthrop
University. "The Grid offered a
value proposition we couldn’t pass up. With great scalability, superior cost
control and automatic optimization for our applications, there was no need to
over-provision our storage as we had to before."

Based on its positive experience with the Grid in its backup infrastructure,
the college will leverage Gridstore to optimize its Hyper-V Server
environment, with a goal to achieve 100% data redundancy for its virtual
infrastructure in an offsite datacenter. Winthrop will leverage the Grid to
help it achieve this goal with a storage solution that grows more powerful as it
scales while eliminating application I/O performance bottlenecks. Coupled with
the value of a ‘Pay-as-you-Scale’ flexible pricing model, Winthrop
will achieve both cost and performance efficiency.

"We are pleased to add Winthrop to
our growing customer roster as we continue to deliver value and expand our
footprint in the education market," said George Symons, CEO,
Gridstore. "With the Grid, Winthrop
can now independently scale capacity, I/O and processing while eliminating
costly storage upgrades. We look forward to working with them by delivering the
best combination of price and performance as they move forward to implement
their Hyper-V environment."