Hosting firm pulls the plug on local hard drives

UK-based managed service provider Ultraspeed claims to have launched the first hosting offering that eliminates the need for local hard drives.

The firm said that its Diskless Server System (DSS) eliminates the primary cause of failure from customer servers.

Ultraspeed's DSS platform uses a storage area network (San) to provide the operating system, applications and data storage for clients.

The DSS servers boot from the San via Gigabit Ethernet connections and all data is continually replicated across the San.

Should an individual San hard disk fail, it is swapped out and the replacement is automatically populated with data without the customer being affected.

This approach avoids a hard disk failure that results in the server being knocked out completely while the disk is replaced and repopulated with data from the last backup.

Storage upgrades are available by changing customer allocations within the San, and the platform provides approximately 10 percent power savings over a traditional implementation.

Michael Shanks, technical director at Ultraspeed, said: "DSS was born out of personal frustration with hard disk failure and lengthy backup restoration procedures.

"It did not seem right that our clients, and their customers, should be at the mercy of one failed component that brings their business grinding to a halt."

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