About Pillar Data Systems™

Seeing through the Storage Smokescreen

Storage, like many other sectors, has been guilty of over-complicating its products to add perceived value. The technology market is well known for forcibly shortened product lifecycles through hard-coded expiration dates and the ever-decreasing time between innovation and obsolescence. Hostway, in partnership with Pillar Data Systems, are determined to change this perception.

Why have Hostway Partnered with Pillar™?

In order to deliver the highest quality Enterprise level Storage Services to our customers, Hostway needed an innovative, high quality storage partner who would enable us to supply unique, cost-effective storage solutions to our UK customers. We believe Pillar help us do exactly that.

Who are Pillar Data Systems™?

Headquartered in San Jose, California, Pillar Data Systems™ takes a sensible, customer-centric approach to networked storage. The company started with a simple, yet powerful idea: build a successful storage company by delivering value that others had promised, but never produced. Pillar’s mission is to design and build the most cost-effective, highly available networked storage solutions on the market. These represent flexible, reliable, scalable storage that grows with an enterprises’ business. These solutions for the first time seamlessly unite SAN and NAS, and multiple tiers of storage on a single platform. The company has created a new class of storage directed toward one goal: satisfying users storage needs.

What are the Major Benefits to the Pillar™ System?

• Storage On-Demand, Per-Gigabyte Pricing – The Pillar storage solution allows businesses to purchase High QoS SAN/NAS storage capacity on a gigabyte per month basis, as requirments increase or decrease.

• Tiered Performance – Pillar’s technology tiers data on each disk, placing “Tier 1”or "High Access" data on the outside of the disk, “Tier 2” or "Medium Access" in the middle, and “Tier 3” or "Low/Archive Access" on the inside, providing intelligent algorithms to ensure priority access to each tier. Users are free to move data from one tier to another, without additional penalty.

• Dual-site Replication – Hostway's implementation includes dual-site Pillar facilities in London and Hannover which allow for off-site replication of data between the two IDC's, and ideal Diasaster Recovery capacity.

• One integrated, automated system – Pillar created a single, integrated system, which reduces the complexities of deploying and managing multiple storage tiers, and lowers operational costs by automating repetitive tasks. Its capabilities combine the best of SAN and NAS to increase both data consolidation and storage utilization. The system has an intuitive interface and policy-based management via Quality of Service (QoS), in which hardware assets are allocated based on QoS metrics.

• Enterprise-class, Not enterprise-cost – Pillar systems are cost effective because they use high volume, modular components throughout. They automatically allocate hardware assets where they are needed most; have n-way active/active sub-system components; one-time software licensing; and incorporate extensive diagnostics and self-healing functions to ensure maximum data availability. They are supported by professional services, field engineering and a technical assistance center.

• Flexibility of choice – Pillar systems enable users to choose whether to deploy a SAN-only system, NAS-only system, or a mixed SAN and NAS system, to scale with business needs. The systems provide intelligent provisioning and predictive modeling which reduce the complex challenges of deploying, provisioning, and managing storage assets. Customers can utilize many different applications at the same time, while delivering the appropriate performance to each from a single system. An enterprise can also scale as its business grows, from two terabytes to hundreds of terabytes.

Click Here for more information on the Pillar Axiom™ Storage Solution

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