Technologies

Storage: the heart of your business

Storage is an extremely important element for your business. Here, you group all the data that make your company a working organisation: your collaborators' mail, your customers' data, data on purchases, sales, production planning, stock management and distribution, your accounting and many other things.

It is essential that, for all those data, you choose the right storage solution, with its appropriate capacity and efficiency. Thus, you create a basis for more operational efficiency. At the same time, you want to control storage costs and make optimal use of your available resources in the context of your business. Maybe, you do not have the necessary in-house expertise on the level of storage.

Combell: your independent storage expert

Indeed, if you count on Combell for your storage needs, there can be more than one reason. You no longer have to invest in storage yourself, we will do that for you.

Combell offers you the solution that perfectly fits your needs, without you having to have expertise in the field of storage. Here too, there is but one golden rule: you can fully focus on your business and Combell will take care of technological support behind the scenes.

Solutions

In consultation with the customer and depending on his specific needs, Combell finds the ideal storage solution. Together, we choose the appropriate type of solution - dedicated or shared storage - but also the technology, the machines and the transportation method.

Exactly because storing your company data is crucial for the efficiency and evolution of your business, Combell is not just a supplier of technology. We are the storage partner who works in close collaboration with its customer. This produces a solution that is precisely tailored to your company's needs and thus supplies tangible added value.

If you choose to outsource your storage needs, you can decide which approach suits you best - dedicated or shared storage - regardless of the type of technology you prefer. With dedicated storage, your company data are located on a SAN reserved for you. The advantage here is that the efficiency of the solution is independent from the writing activity of other customers. With a shared solution, you share the SAN with other companies. In this context, we constantly monitor usage, in order to be able to immediately adapt the capacity of the solution if need be. That way, we guarantee that every customer benefits from shared storage of the best quality and functionality.

Depending on the use of the solution and type of data you put on it, with dedicated and shared storage, you always have the choice between high and low performance. The efficiency depends on the used data disks. SAS disks (Serial Attached SCSI) and FC disks (Fibre Channel) offer high performance. They are faster and more robust, but also more expensive. SAS and FC disks are e.g. more indicated for storing a frequently used database. SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) is typical for online storage, among other things of large downloads, PDF files and other static documents.

Technologies

Combell acts as your storage partner and translates your needs to a perfectly suited technological solution. Storage can be performed locally on the server. In this context, we also use disks in RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) configuration.

This solution offers high performance and a strong basic security. If one disk of the configuration fails, the system simply keeps running on the other disks, while Combell replaces the failed disk.

Is your need for storage greater than what the server can take? And do you want more efficiency? DAS (Direct Attached Storage) can offer a solution. In that case, we link extra disks to the server.
With a SAN (Storage Area Network) you eliminate the limitations of DAS. With a SAN, you place your data in a separate network. This offers more efficiency, flexibility and scalability.
Finally, you can choose to share your storage environment over the network. With NAS (Network Attached Storage), the saved data are then available through the network.

Independent storage partner

Depending on your specific storage needs, you choose the best suited solution with the most appropriate hardware, in consultation with Combell. The offered set-up varies according to your needs.

Are you working with a clearly defined, not very changeable environment? Or do your storage needs evolve very quickly? Does the solution have to be easily scalable and expandable? Do you want more functionality in the frame of data deduplication?

Regardless of the type of storage you need, Combell never fails to deliver a solution that perfectly suits your need for efficiency and safety. To do so, we use the hardware that will best support the required solution. Today, Combell e.g. uses products from Dell and NetApp.

For the development of the storage environment, Combell offers you a choice from several technologies. Together with Combell, you can decide which technology offers the best solution to your specific storage needs. Traditionally, we use glass fibre cable. Today, people generally prefer iSCSI. This is SCSI over Ethernet cabling: a very efficient solution that combines network and storage technology. The great advantage of iSCSI is that you do not have to invest in FC (Fibre Channel) switches, because iSCSI runs through ordinary Ethernet switches. Moreover, IP is a protocol for which Combell has acquired years of expertise. Full FC storage is, of course, also possible, but in practice, Combell only uses that technology for solutions that require synchronous replication.