StrongLink is the ultimate heterogeneous storage management software solution with advanced technologies for intelligent data management across local, network and cloud storage.
Large IT organizations hate licensing software for capacity for one simple reason: Data grows exponentially—a fact over which they often have little or no control. And they have even less control over the license price, which steadily increases with the amount of data.
The product range affected is for storage, backup, archiving, replication, data management, data monitoring and data movement.
Software providers love software licenses that can be billed based on capacity. Most providers operate in the same way: a low-cost entry-level system and expensive upgrades once the company has chosen a vendor. With each renewal, the term increases. This is classic vendor lock-in.
In the cloud age, another component determines price: performance. Network bandwidth licensing adds further complexity to the licensing jungle. Not only is bandwidth licensed based on the cumulative amount of data transmitted over the network, but it also licenses the maximum amount of data that can be transmitted over the network at a given time. Such licensing is typically based on bits per second. If more data is to be transported in the same period, the license must be renewed. Sounds reasonable and fair to most IT departments.
As always, the trick lies in the complexity.
Software license tied to the hardware
Separate software license for each switch
Software license for monitoring
Software license for backup based on data volume or optional services to be backed up (!= clients)
Central Administration Licenses Transfer Path Licenses
Licenses for cloud storage and additional licenses for movements (uploads, moves, downloads, etc.)
Licences for processor cores (which can be expensive for an Oracle database on an AMD server with 64 cores – per CPU!)
Licenses for virtual instances, which can quickly become unpredictable with containers
etc. etc.
Generally, these licenses are also asynchronous. For example, it's much cheaper to upload data to the cloud than to retrieve it. This is called data lock-in.
StrongBox Data Solutions' goal is to make the management of capacity-based licensing with StrongLink transparent and automated. To develop the StrongLink Autonomous Data Management solution, all forms of capacity-based metering licenses were eliminated as a central design principle of a scale-out architecture. With StrongLink, there is no such thing as capacity licensing and there never will be. With StrongLink, only the performance a company needs to manage its workflows is licensed.
Prices don't change over time, making budgeting easier.
The license is calculated based on four simple variables:
What is the power of a node?
How many nodes are there per location?
How many locations are there?
Is tape storage involved?
For example, we refer to an instance of StrongLink that becomes a client on a server or VM as a Star or StrongLink node. The license quantity for such a Star node (Star license) is determined by the number of CPU cores in that node allocated to the system. Lighter workflows and simpler use cases would also use and license a smaller number of CPU cores. Heavier or more complex workflows with higher system requirements can be allocated a larger number of CPU cores to increase node performance. These also incur higher licensing costs.
The second component of the StrongLink licensing model is determining whether more than one star node, e.g., for high availability or additional performance requirements, is combined in a configuration. We then refer to this as a constellation. With its scale-out architecture, StrongLink can be deployed with three or more nodes. StrongLink can be expanded to any number of nodes to meet performance requirements.
The question of the number of geographical locations that are remotely connected, for example, for DR or other replication use cases, is easy to answer. Two or more locations or StrongLink constellations are considered a galaxy.
The final variable is tape library support. This is an optional add-on, as not everyone needs tape storage. For those who do, the ability to seamlessly expand their flash and disk-based storage with local tape libraries without capacity limitations is a tremendous advantage.
"Predictable, consistent pricing makes it easy to plan for the future without surprises. This works even when it's difficult to predict how quickly data will grow over time. Just as a network switch provider doesn't charge you a variable rate based on the amount of data flowing through your lines, StrongLink licensing allows you to control your storage costs without adding another capacity tax to your environment," says Floyd Christofferson, CEO of StrongBox Data Solutions.
The ability to automate policy-based data placement across multiple storage types, including tape and cloud, doesn't help organizations completely break away from closed vendor or data ecosystems. However, it does help them avoid being further penalized for the growth of their data.
Would you like to see for yourself how you can manage your data and storage resources more efficiently and effectively? Schedule a PoC with us.
