catching the software defined storage wave

Copyright © 2014 DataCore Software Corp. – All Rights Reserved.Educational Content for Engineers, by Engineers

Catching the Software-Defined Storage Wave

Jeff Slapp DataCore Software

Copyright © 2014 DataCore Software Corp. – All Rights Reserved.

INTRODUCTION

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17 years as an IT professional 15 years working with virtualization technology 10 years working with DataCore Software in the field

► 5 years as a partner deploying DataCore solutions worldwide

► 5 years as a customer deploying DataCore solutions for south Florida cloud service provider

Now working for DataCore Software as a Technical Product Specialist

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Background Info

Copyright © 2014 DataCore Software Corp. – All Rights Reserved. 4

Storage Market in Midst of Disruption

CHALLENGES

Too many incompatible devices

New software for every device

Silos of storage Management

Server Storage

1985

NASSAN

2000

Server Storage

Hybrid Arrays

Today

NAS SAN

Server Storage

Flash Arrays

Flash

ConvergedSystems

Cloud


SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE OVERVIEW

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Leverages any commodity storage hardware platform Runs on any commodity server hardware platform Unifies disparate storage technologies Improves data service availability (i.e. high-availability) Improves data access performance Pools storage resources (i.e. capacity management and efficiency) Automates core storage functions (i.e. data protection) Exposes programming interfaces (APIs) Allows modification of storage architecture without interruption

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Software-Defined Storage Principles

http://www.datacore.com/


Software-Defined Storage Virtualization Abstraction

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Software-Defined Storage Dependencies

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http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/679/118587


ABSTRACTION: THE FOUNDATION OF SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE

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What Is Abstraction?

Hardware abstraction, by way of software, serves to hide the differences between the underlying hardware and the software that lives above it.

The purpose of abstraction is to simplify software development so that software can execute regardless of the make and model of hardware.

The abstraction layer translates generalized software functions into platform-specific hardware functions, and vice versa. The net-net of this is a much broader range of hardware the software can run on without needing to be recompiled.

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Typical Server Abstraction Example


Typical Storage Abstraction Example


Without abstraction, we remain tightly-coupled with the hardware.

If we remain tightly-coupled to the hardware, then most of the benefits of Software-Defined Storage are lost, or at best are purchased, thrown out, and repurchased with each hardware refresh cycle… very wasteful.

It is much more cost effective to purchase the storage intelligence once, and swap physical disk resources in and out as appropriate for the storage task at hand.

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Why Is this Important?



THE SOLUTION:ONE SOFTWARE PLATFORM

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One Software Platform for any Storage Hardware

Accelerate

Centralize & Automate

Pool & Protect


Use Cases for Software-Defined Storage

Virtualize your existing storage

hardware

Create virtual SANs with server-attached

storage

Integrate Flash/SSDs with existing storage

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High-endArrays

MidrangeAppliances

CloudStorage

Flash Arrays

Virtualize External Storage HardwareFUNDAMENTALS OF DATACORE STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION

Runs on standard x86 servers

One set of common storage services for all storage devices

All storage capacity in a single pool eliminating wasted capacity

Unlike storage systems communicate seamlessly reducing complexity and preventing downtime

Replicates data leaving no single point of failure

Seamless scalability with no reason to commit to a single hardware manufacturer

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Easy Integration and Sharing of Flash Storage

Flash Cards inDataCore nodes

Flash Arrays in storage pool

Flash Cards in Virtual SAN

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Share Flash between servers and applications

Minimize downtime and risk of integration

Complete set of storage services

Block level auto-tiering

Easily add Flash anytime

Realistic path to all Flashenvironments

High-endArrays

MidrangeAppliances

BulkStorage High-end

Arrays

MidrangeAppliances

FlashArrays


REAL WORLD EXAMPLES OF SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE IN ACTION

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Environment A has been in service for two years. The IT Director has been given a project that requires various

performance classes of storage to be added to meet the new workload demands.

Normally this would require significant preparation, planning, workload calculations, complex ROI models, and man-hours to test and implement.

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EXAMPLE #1 - Problem

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Thankfully the organization leverages a software defined storage solution that will maximize performance and utilization of any block-level storage device that is presented to it.

Storage can be safely added on-the-fly with no interruption to workload processing.

Auto-tiering ensures that the maximum performance benefit is delivered to the datasets that require high performance disk.

And for the business-critical data, synchronous mirroring is enabled to ensure that not only is fault-tolerance provided through component-level redundancy, but true high-availability through data-level redundancy.

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EXAMPLE #1 - Solution


Environment B has been in service for five years. The IT Director is forced to perform a hardware refresh on the

existing storage arrays because the vendor is terminating support for them within the next six months.

Significant effort needs to be focused on choosing the right hardware, the right vendor, the right technology, the right features, at the right price.

Additionally, over 50TB of production data spanning 100 volumes need to be migrated to the new storage hardware and without impacting production.

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EXAMPLE #2 - Problem


Thankfully, the organization leverages a software defined storage solution that will make this transition seamless.

Once the vendor has been chosen and the make and model has been determined, simply add the new storage to the existing storage pool and remove the old storage from the storage pool.

The storage software will automatically migrate the data blocks from the old storage to the new storage.

The result: no interruption to production and the data migration which could have taken months is completed in a fraction of that time.

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EXAMPLE #2 - Solution


It is commonly thought that when a storage array or frame reaches end-of-support-life, that it must be completely decommissioned. This is simply not the case.

It may not serve in a production role any longer, but that doesn’t mean it can’t continue to be useful for test/development or VDI solutions within the organization.

Most storage array’s that are at end-of-life are still very capable systems and continue to work fine for many more years. Combine these legacy systems with flash through the use of auto-tiering and they become as useful as they were the day you put them into production.

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Other Points To Consider


One Storage Services Platformacross your entire infrastructure

10th generation product 16 Years of R&D 25,000+ deployments worldwide Most comprehensive hardware-agnostic

storage stack in the industry

Cross-device Storage Services

Auto-tiering

Async Replication

Virtual SAN

Storage Pooling

Storage Load Balancing

Centralized Management

Analysis & Reporting

Sync Mirroring

Adaptive Caching

Thin Provisioning

Data Migration

Snapshots

Continuous Data Protection

NAS/SAN (Unified Storage)

catching the software defined storage wave

Software

foundation of software

benefits of software

way of software

software development

generalized software

storage market

storage intelli

datacore solutions