In the competitive world of web hosting and cloud infrastructure, “good enough” is rarely good enough. For Krystal, one of the UK’s largest independent web hosting companies, the goal has always been quality and transparency—characteristics they associate with the rare crystals that inspire their name.
Founded in 2002, Krystal now supports nearly 30,000 clients and over 200,000 websites. However, when they set out to build Katapult—their next-generation virtual Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform—they faced a significant technical hurdle.
The Challenge: When “Reliable” Isn’t Scalable
Krystal’s vision for Katapult was ambitious. They wanted to offer a cloud platform built for speed and ease of use. However, their existing OnApp platform using Integrated Storage became a bottleneck.
While reliable, the legacy system lacked the agility required for a modern cloud. As detailed in the full Krystal Success Story, the IT team struggled with resizing virtual drives on demand and expanding the cluster without tedious manual data rebalancing. Krystal needed a solution that was fast, stable, and capable of scaling instantly without compromising data integrity.
The Solution: No Compromises with StorPool
“Storage forms the bedrock of any cloud platform, so whatever you use has to be bulletproof. At Krystal we’ve always had a standard rule; buy the very best solution available and sleep well at night!” — Simon Blackler, CEO of Krystal
After reviewing several Software-Defined Storage (SDS) options and traditional SAN alternatives, Krystal selected StorPool Storage.
StorPool provided the perfect foundation for Katapult by transforming commodity hardware into a fast, highly available, shared-storage system. By utilizing triple data replication, StorPool offered the data protection Krystal required, alongside a robust API that allowed for the automation necessary in a modern IaaS environment.
Extreme Performance by Design
To achieve the metrics highlighted in our Cloud Performance Report, Krystal combined StorPool’s software with a cutting-edge hardware stack:
- Processors: AMD EPYC 2
- Network: 50Gbps
- Storage Media: NVMe Storage Clusters
- Virtualization: KVM
This combination allowed Krystal to deliver on the promise of a modern SDS: high availability, extreme performance, and massive flexibility.
The Results: 100% Availability
The migration to StorPool allowed Krystal to launch Katapult with confidence. The limitations of the old system vanished, replaced by a “scale-as-you-grow” architecture that offered density improvements and significant hardware savings.
As Alex Easter, CTO of Krystal, noted, “It is absolutely critical for us that our storage is both 100% reliable and 100% available. And StorPool 100% lives up to that promise!”
By switching to StorPool, Krystal didn’t just solve a storage problem; they built a future-proof foundation for Katapult, ensuring their clients get the fastest, most reliable cloud experience possible.
Ready to achieve similar performance gains for your business? Talk with one of our experts today!