QSAN Products Improve ROI and Delivery Time of Tenzor

Summary: Large scale communications infrastructure provider and system integrator Tenzor-Telecom LLC switches to the Qsan F600Q as its main SAN solution for high performance virtualization storage and Qsan U210 as its NAS offering for shared file access. This high value total storage solution cuts its delivery time on customer data center projects and helps its customers achieve faster ROI on datacenter infrastructure investment.
 
Products Used: QSAN F600Q D424
 
Features Highlighted: Thin provisioning, SSD Caching, Snapshot
 
The Business
Tenzor-Telecom LLC is a telecommunications and IT system integrator headquartered in Moscow with customers around the country. Specializing in establishing enterprise data centers for corporations and government organizations, Tenzor-Telecom researches the latest technology in data center infrastructure design and partners with the domestic and foreign leaders in enterprise hardware and software to create information systems that offer the best value for its customers.
 
As a vertically integrated IT and telecom provider, Tenzor-Telecom offers its customers not just telecommunications infrastructure in the form of fiber optic lines and structured cabling systems, but also designs and implements the data center operations for customers to take advantage of their newfound advanced networking capability. Using the latest server hardware and software, switches, UPS systems and telecommunication components, Tenzor-Telecom creates powerful corporate data center solutions for its clients.
 
Virtualization and cloud computing are a core component of Tenzor -Telecom’s data center design philosophy, fundamental to the value that their infrastructure projects add to their customers IT operations. Virtualization and technologies such as “zero-client” or VDI take advantage of the principle of thin provisioning and hardware consolidation to minimize physical server hardware while increasing reliability, reducing both fixed and operating costs, and simplifying information management and security.
 
Application virtualization allows its customers to optimize the use of computing resources and reduce the costs of data center operation and maintenance. At the same time it simplifies the task of ensuring information security by centralizing resources in the data center. Applying less equipment but investing in high quality, high performance assets leads to the increased reliability and dependability of the modern IT data center produced by Tenzor-Telecom.
 
The Challenge
As Tenzor-Telecom works with its clients on new and existing infrastructure projects, it’s found many of its customers still rely on direct attached storage at the server or client desktop. Direct attached storage doesn’t work well with enterprise virtualization, making it hard for Tenzor-Telecom to provide the true return on investment that its customers seek in their infrastructure projects. These legacy storage systems provide limited storage space and don’t scale well, are non-redundant and difficult to backup, hard to secure, and make it difficult to access files across servers.
 
When one server goes down, all data attached to that server is lost. When more capacity is needed, it’s not always possible to add more disks if the storage bays of a server are already occupied. Cross-server file access is slow and complex. In addition, direct attached storage uses up CPU processing cycles for storage operation overhead, such as RAID, reducing server performance.
 
The Solution
With virtualization as a major philosophy in its IT data center design, networked storage was an obvious necessity. Based on evaluating market solutions on a number of factors as well as field testing, Tenzor- Telecom found the best total package solution with Qsan’s SAN and NAS offerings. High performance metrics, competitive hardware specifications and strong reliability made it an attractive offering straight from the start. For its virtualization implementations, Tenzor-Telecom chose the F600-D424 AegisSAN LX model for its high performance Intel Xeon processors, reliable dual RAID controllers and redundant power supplies and scalability with support for up to 256 SAS and SATA drives. With Fibre Channel, the VMWare servers have shared access to the high performance SAN storage.
 
Tenzor-Telecom further tunes the F600Q for Virtualization performance by using SSD drives in conjunction with Qsan’s SSD Caching feature. With thin provisioning, Tensor’s clients enjoy the maximum value of their SAN’s physical capacity, and snapshots make it easy to make quick backups of virtual machines.
 
To provide shared file storage, Tenzor-Telecom chose Qsan’s TrioNAS U210 product. With a dedicated RAID controller, the U210 protects customer’s data while providing shared network access to files. Centralized storage also makes their files easier to manage and backup regularly.
 
The Results
Qsan’s F600Q-D424 and U210 TrioNAS product have met all of Tenzor-Telecom LLC’s expectations and more, making it easier for them to implement the most advanced and efficient data centers for their customers and increasing not just their customers ROI, but their own as well.  
 
The block storage of the F600Q-D424 SAN has provided incredibly reliable virtualization storage to Tenzor's clients, with its dual RAID storage controllers, and power supplies. Performance is increased by the Xeon processors, use of SSD drives with SSD Caching, and VMWare VAAI support, meaning virtualization storage operations are performed on the SAN itself instead of taking up server processing time. Better storage performance means better virtualization performance and Tenzor-Telecom’s projects produce highly reliable, and fast virtualized server infrastructure.
 
The U210 TrioNAS has also been a revelation for Tenzor-Telecom's clients which have enjoyed reliable, RAID-backed shared file access. Dual 80 Plus Power supplies mean ultra reliable storage and thin provisioning combined with VDI infrastructure such as "Zero-client" lets enterprises efficiently  allocate storage capacity for workgroups, providing the maximum computing value for the minimum hardware outlay.
 
The combination of the F600Q-D424 used for virtualized block storage and the TrioNAS U210 for shared file storage has formed Tenzor-Telecom's complete network storage solution for its clients and been essential to its datacenter offering. These networked storage solutions not only provide reliable data storage, but stronger, more reliable server infrastructure. With the Qsan powered solution, data is completely redundant, and if a server or disk goes down there is no downtime or data loss. In addition, hot swappable storage means disk upgrades, maintenance or replacements can happen without downtime. With consolidated data storage, data management is simplified for the IT staff and information security is much easier to administer.
 
Besides improved storage performance, security and reliability for its customers, Tenzor-Telecom's bottom line has benefited from fast product delivery times, ease of ordering, and smooth installation.
 
"Despite the fact that the Qsan Storage products has all the features of similar systems made by other manufacturers, products of Qsan are distinguished from the competitors by lower price, ease of configuration, and ease of ordering, as well as quite acceptable time of delivery," said Mikhail Markelov, CTO of Tenzor-Telecom LLC, "This is exactly what has helped us to choose Qsan rather than some other well known brand-name competitors when implementing solutions for our customers".
 
Seeing the benefits that its clients experienced with Qsan, Tenzor-Telecom itself decided to use Qsan products for internal storage as well.
 
"Our company (LLC "Tenzor-Telecom") has purchased one of these storage systems in order to use it as a backup storage of data in addition to the existing tape library. In fact, all the information resources of our company are also organized on a VMWare virtualization platform," said Mikhail Markelov.
 
About Qsan
 Qsan Technology was founded in 2004 by a group of experienced engineers who wanted to build top-notch storage systems. With outstanding performance, completed data protection, and smart data management, Qsan’s storage systems will be the worldwide best without compromise.
Qsan storage solutions have been deployed globally and trusted by organizations’ businesses of all sizes and locations; furthermore, Qsan is a recognized global leader in the storage industry and the leading developer of data management and protection. Our customers can focus on building their business with award-winning data storage product lines combined with dedicated global service and support from Qsan Technology.

We first designed an iSCSI RAID controller. The resulting P100C was the first iSCSI RAID controller launched in 2005. In 2009, we launched P500Q, the first 10G iSCSI redundant RAID controller system. With QiSOE offload engine design, Qsan resolved the latency challenge for 10G iSCSI, and brought iSCSI to high availability applications. In 2012, Qsan received Computex Best Choice for U600Q TrioNAS LX storage systems. With completed product portfolio, including iSCSI, Fibre Channel, Hybrid SAN, NAS, and Unified storage systems, Qsan provides total and best price-performance solutions for SME.
Qsan is not just a storage vendor, but also a technology and design company with a focus on solution innovation. For more information, please visit: www.Qsan.com
 
News Contact
Cynthia Mou
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