Based on the High Coast region of North Sweden in Nordingrå, Space2u is an established web hosting company providing a large portfolio of services, such as virtual private servers, hosted exchange, and offsite back-up. Faced with growing volumes of data, the company needed to find a way to manage it effectively. Space2u required a storage solution that could protect present day data, and also expand with future growth.

The incumbent decentralised solution, which consisted of numerous physical servers with direct attached storage units, provided a low utilisation ratio and hindered the company’s ability to expand and develop new offerings for its customers. Immediate access to mission critical data is essential for Space2u’s customers. To achieve this, the company needed a high performance, high capacity solution, which would support its annual growth rate of 15% while allowing for a cost-efficient scale out.

With help from value added partner Johan Tungström, CEO at Layer 8, Space2u evaluated several solutions from legacy providers, including EMC and Dell Compellent. Eventually, Space2u selected a dynamic storage platform, based on Supermicro and powered by Nexentastor, a software-defined storage solution.

The solution consisted of an HA Cluster with two nodes and features three Zeus RAM devices to increase write acceleration. With Nexentastor, Space2u now is able to easily pool and tier large amounts of data. The solution also has increased performance—with IOPS of 20,000+ now being achieved. These superior I/O speeds improve customer satisfaction and Nexentastor’s straightforward implementation and management system has reduced Space2u’s staff labour requirements.

Erik Meijer, CTO of Space2u explains: “The upgraded storage solution, underpinned by Nexentastor, has resolved all of our storage issues. We now are able to provide our customers with instant access to mission critical data. This has helped us to not only save money and time, but also remain competitive in an increasingly growing industry.”

Evan Powell, CEO of Nexenta says: “Nexenta’s software-defined storage provides the high performance and flexibility that web hosting providers, such as Space2u, require in order to remain competitive. We are positive that the solution has helped Space2u maintain its reputation in the web hosting industry and that it will continue to play a key role as the company moves towards an increasingly virtual environment.”