How Cloud Solves the IT Maintenance Dilemma – Part 1

Posted by Nicos Vekiarides on May 13th, 2012
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It’s only natural that most organizations split their IT budget between new technology to enhance business operations and maintenance of their existing infrastructure. Although the actual split varies across organizations, it is striking how high the typical percentage of budget allocated to IT maintenance is. According to Enterprise Strategy Group’s 2012 Spending Intentions Survey, organizations plan to spend a whopping 60-72% of IT budget maintaining existing infrastructure in 2012. Within that ESG survey group, the highest percentage represents organizations with decreasing IT budgets while the lowest percentage represents organizations with increasing IT budgets. See the results in the clickable chart below:

A simple explanation for the “maintenance-heavy” budget split may be that most organizations accumulate more and more infrastructure over time. Much of the infrastructure houses data, a result of ever increasing demands for storage capacity.

For businesses focused on enhancing their customer offerings and experience, having the vast majority of their IT budgets spent outside of their primary focus is problematic.  Put simply, if creating value for customers is the primary businesses objective, the best use of IT resources is not infrastructure maintenance.

So does the availability of cloud shift IT budget allocations away from maintenance toward new technologies?  While cloud doesn’t necessarily make the cost of maintenance disappear, it can free up IT staff to focus on new technologies that deliver the operational enhancements that businesses are seeking.

In Part 2 of this series, we will examine how cloud addresses the maintenance dilemma for data storage…

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Is OpenStack a New Door to Cloud Adoption?

Posted by Nicos Vekiarides on May 10th, 2012
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All the buzz surrounding OpenStack over the past few months may beg the question of whether Openstack can repeat for Cloud what Linux has done for server operating systems over the past several years. With an enthusiastic following and a compelling, if not industry-leading set of functionality, the possibilities may be boundless. This week’s announcement of the HP Cloud public beta, an OpenStack-based cloud that includes compute, object storage and a content delivery network, provides even further momentum to this open source effort. With well-known vendors such as HP, Rackspace and hundreds of others backing them, we can expect OpenStack adoption to increase.

In one of the more storied instances of open source successes, the Linux operating system, first released in 1991, was an alternative to existing operating systems embraced primarily by developers. Today, Linux owns over 18% of the server market for factory-shipped servers, excluding installations on bare-metal or repurposed servers. While Linux has not necessarily grown to become the leading server OS, its overall influence on the server market has been very positive, particularly for end-users who benefit from a broader selection of OS choices.

Most open source software offers a number of advantages over standard commercially licensed software including:

  • A larger community of developers – crowdsourcing across multiple organizations and vendors
  • Lower hardware costs – supporting standard off-the-shelf hardware
  • Lower software costs – since it is free by design
  • Less lock-in, better interoperability – fostering collaboration across many vendors and organizations to broaden interoperability

In fact, by virtue of its interoperability, OpenStack benefits from a rich ecosystem of software and hardware applications that now natively interface with HP Cloud. HP has introduced several categories of partner applications including database, mobile, security, storage and testing/development among others.

For storage-oriented folks, one of the more interesting set of partner applications are cloud storage gateways, like CloudArray, which make it simple for businesses to augment existing storage infrastructure with secure cloud-backed storage. To that end, TwinStrata has joined HP’s partner network and released a free CloudArray appliance specifically for HP Cloud customers for storing and managing up to 1TB of cloud storage with the look, feel and security of local iSCSI storage.

Whether or not OpenStack will move to the forefront of cloud technologies is yet to be seen. Whatever the outcome, we expect the open source community to wield substantial influence on the cloud segment in general, creating a win-win situation for customers by continually introducing new levels of innovation and interoperability. Do you see open source clouds in your future? Let us know.

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Five Advantages of Virtual Storage Appliances (VSAs)

Posted by Nicos Vekiarides on April 24th, 2012
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With hypervisors a ubiquitous component of nearly every IT deployment, virtual appliances present a compelling alternative to traditional physical appliances by offering a simpler and faster software deployment model. In recent years, many data storage vendors have jumped on the “virtual bandwagon,” offering virtual storage appliances, often referred to as VSAs, and bucking the trend of an industry largely dominated by traditional hardware boxes.

While virtual storage appliances may seem disruptive to the accepted model of an integrated storage array, their attractiveness is largely based on the separation of the high-value I/O software stack from the commodity hardware that underlies them. This software/hardware decoupling enables new levels of deployment flexibility for end-users. For those considering deploying new storage infrastructure, VSAs offer a number of advantages over physical appliances and traditional storage arrays. Five of these advantages include:

  1. Zero-U footprint: There’s a certain appeal to deploying data storage systems that consume near-zero dedicated rack and floor space, especially considering traditional data storage systems may often occupy the majority of a data center. Of course, there is a catch — VSAs consume real CPU and memory resources and the actual data storage devices still need to reside somewhere. However, in the case of cloud storage VSAs, the bulk of the storage may reside in an external cloud provider, moving users closer to the near-zero footprint ideal.
  2. Fastest time to POC: Ever try setting up a proof of concept (POC) for a new data storage system? Truth is, many storage vendors offer free trials of their physical boxes, but they involve the logistics of transporting the appliance, installing, configuring, powering, cabling, etc.  Even though the POC can start in minutes once the hardware is in place, getting to that point can cost weeks of lead time. Downloading a virtual appliance and installing it in minutes accelerates the trial process dramatically, reducing risk and minimizing time lost waiting.
  3. Option to create your own box: It is often challenging to create a “one-size-fits-all” storage appliance. In spite of many traditional storage products offering a multitude of configuration possibilities, sometimes base configurations are too large or maximum configurations are too small — other times, it’s hard to find the appropriate size in between. Virtual storage appliances enable deployment on physical platforms the size that business requirements dictate. Ability to use commodity or best-of-breed data storage devices means any customer can achieve the desired ratio of price, performance and availability. What’s more, many VSAs operate on free hypervisor platforms such as VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer, minimizing the need for investment in additional hypervisor licenses.
  4. Software investment protection: Any IT administrator who has lived through the process of deploying storage arrays and migrating and retiring those arrays just a few short years later can appreciate the value of decoupling the storage software from the hardware that becomes obsolete after a few years. Preserving the existing software stack reduces the downtime and risk of the data storage upgrade and replacement cycle. This advantage becomes even stronger when a VSA is coupled with the nearly infinite storage capacity offered by cloud providers, alleviating the concern of ever running out of capacity, one of the most common reasons for upgrade.
  5. Platform mobility and resilience: When it comes to high availability and disaster recovery, traditional storage appliances often mandate additional hardware at both the primary site where the appliance resides and at  secondary or disaster sites. Virtual storage appliances, on the other hand, can leverage existing virtual infrastructure on-premise, off-premise or even in the cloud to increase system availability and resilience. If there is an outage at the primary site, restart the appliance at a secondary site or even in the cloud (for cloud storage VSAs). If the current appliance platform does not meet performance requirements, simply move the appliance to a more powerful and faster platform. With VSAs, there is no longer a need for dedicated redundant hardware on-premise or off-premise.

Given all of the benefits, it’s no wonder the number of VSA offerings on the market is growing. A recent TechTarget article entitled Virtual storage appliance market: Categories, capabilities describes several categories of VSAs: these include shared file storage solutions such as Openfiler, storage optimizers that provide caching and tiering including DataCore SANsymphony and cloud storage gateways such as TwinStrata CloudArray.

Bottom line? There are many benefits to virtual storage appliances and while they don’t necessarily replace physical appliances for every use-case, they offer a wealth of new options and flexibility to IT organizations consuming data storage.

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Using Multiple Clouds to Improve IT Resilience

Posted by Nicos Vekiarides on April 17th, 2012
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A recent GigaOm article proclaimed “There’s no need to be a one-cloud company.” The article proceeded to highlight reasons why organizations ought to consider distributing their cloud-based applications and risk across multiple cloud providers. While such a tactic may seem unnecessary given the redundancy and SLAs that many cloud providers offer, historical events suggest there is indeed wisdom in relying on more than one cloud.

Nearly one year has elapsed since the Amazon EC2 outage of 2011 that took down a number of online businesses including Reddit, HootSuite, Foursquare and Quora, but the impact has not been forgotten. One of the key takeaways from that outage was that organizations using cloud-based IT are responsible for building and following best practices for protecting their infrastructure against outages of all types –not just service interruptions, but also user errors, viruses and even data loss. Off-site backup and disaster recovery are standard practices for traditional on-premise IT. For organizations running their business-critical applications in the cloud, achieving the same levels of resilience means extending infrastructure “off-cloud” or across multiple clouds.

While one can concoct elaborate schemes for extending compute environments across multiple clouds, a simple starting point is extending backup and data protection off-cloud. Cloud gateway solutions that operate in cloud compute environments, like CloudArray, are ideal for backing up or replicating business-critical application data to different physical locations in the same cloud or to external cloud providers.

Although cloud storage gateways are more frequently deployed in on-premise environments, they are equally effective replicating data from cloud-to-cloud. For organizations lacking on-premise infrastructure, cloud-to-cloud backup, replication and continuous data protection can help them meet recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) required for their critical data.

Cloud storage gateways enable organizations to make their data and applications in the cloud more resilient with the disaster recovery capability that is an essential aspect of most IT deployments. If you are running or thinking about running business-critical applications in the cloud, consider the peace of mind afforded by off-cloud data protection.

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Survey Results: More Signs Cloud Storage is Moving to the Mainstream

Posted by Nicos Vekiarides on April 3rd, 2012
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It’s no secret that many organizations have begun to look at public and private clouds as alternatives to traditional IT infrastructure. In January 2012, Enterprise Strategy Group published their 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey revealing that 28% of organizations surveyed were using cloud computing services as a way to control IT costs, up substantially from 13% in 2009.

Cloud storage is one of the many ways that organizations are leveraging cloud services today. With public and private cloud storage available from a number of well-known providers such as Amazon, AT&T, Nirvanix, RackSpace, Google, HP and OpenStack, and cloud storage gateway technologies enabling instant integration of cloud storage into existing IT storage environments, businesses are examining and/or using cloud storage to augment existing IT infrastructure as an alternative to traditional storage.

With this in mind, let’s take a look beyond the touted cost containment benefits and examine how adopters of cloud storage are actually using it to solve problems. TwinStrata launched its own survey in February 2012 to gain further insight into this burgeoning enterprise-class cloud storage market, polling several hundred IT decision makers to gather data around cloud storage use cases and their relevance to data storage challenges. Below are some of the key results of the survey.

Data Storage Challenges

Survey participants were asked to identify their top data storage challenges.

Topping the list was disaster recovery, with over 60% of respondents identifying it as a data storage challenge. For many organizations, the purchase of off-site infrastructure for disaster recovery purposes represents a budgetary challenge and is often out of reach. Second up was handling storage growth. With organizations experiencing data growth up to 50% per year and long term retention requirements growing, it is not surprising to see this identified as a top challenge. Closely related to this and tied for third is the category storage upgrade costs, incurred as a result of outgrowing and replacing storage systems on a regular basis. Also tied for third is having a path to cloud storage, implying that many businesses embrace the cloud business model and the opportunity to recognize new cost and administrative efficiencies, but have not quite figured out how to create a seamless path to cloud storage for their specific environments.

Cloud Storage Use Cases

Survey participants were asked to indicate their interest level in cloud storage use cases.

At the top of the list of use cases was off-site backup and archival, followed very closely by disaster recovery. A reasonable deduction based on responses to the prior survey question is that users are in fact looking to the cloud to solve gaps in their backup and disaster recovery strategies. This result shows the strong appeal of using pay-as-you-go infrastructure versus dedicated infrastructure for seldom-used but business-critical functions. Next up are storage tiering and central storage for remote offices. Again, relating back to the responses to the prior survey question, storage tiering to cloud addresses both the storage growth challenge as well as the storage upgrade cost challenge by moving less critical or less frequently accessed data to the cloud, effectively extending the life and capacity of existing storage systems. Central storage for remote offices, on the other hand, addresses the administrative burden of decentralized IT environments where discrete storage systems may reside across multiple sites requiring the traditional life cycle of maintenance, support and replacement. By centralizing storage to the cloud, both storage costs and remote management costs can be reduced drastically.

Is Cloud Storage Moving to the Mainstream?

The survey results indicate cloud storage adoption is indeed making strides. For specific use cases, such as off-site backup and disaster recovery, the resounding answer from users is that cloud is a compelling solution. For other use cases, such as primary storage, the response from users is mixed with 41% of respondents having no interest in such a solution and 48% of respondents showing some interest. In both cases, results indicate that cloud storage is pushing closer to the mainstream and may soon become an integral part of every IT infrastructure.

Bottom line? Now is a good time to discover how your organization can benefit from cloud storage.

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What Cloud Storage Standards Could Mean For You

Posted by Nicos Vekiarides on March 21st, 2012
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The notion of standardizing access to object-based cloud storage across vendors and cloud providers is not new but promises to have a positive impact on cloud storage users and overall adoption. In his recent article, A Call for More Cloud Storage Standards Support, Mike Vizard calls for IT organizations to help hasten vendors toward compliance with the CDMI standards currently in draft.

The benefits of standards compliance are tangible, alleviating vendor lock-in due to proprietary cloud storage interfaces and enabling tighter integration of cloud storage with applications and operating systems, all while maintaining a choice of cloud vendors. What this translates to is customer “freedom of mobility” between different public and private cloud providers and investment protection for infrastructure or solutions that depend on cloud storage.

With standards still in progress, many cloud storage customers have discovered cloud storage mobility and freedom through cloud storage gateways, like CloudArray. These gateways eliminate vendor lock-in by using already standardized storage protocols, such as iSCSI, offering compatibility with the vast majority of operating systems and applications presently in use. Gateways make cloud storage compliant with today’s standards and bypass vendor lock-in concerns. Does this mean that gateways deem CDMI unnecessary? Not for every case. Customers unwilling to trade object-based interfaces for today’s standard block or file interfaces would still make a valid case for the CDMI standard.

On the other hand, consider that gateways provide a number of additional benefits that standards will not address, particularly when augmenting on-premise storage environments with cloud storage. These include:

  • Local caching and optimized cloud layout to improve performance. See John Bates’s write-ups on how gateways can vastly improve cloud storage performance here and here
  • Data reduction to reduce the amount of data stored in the cloud by eliminating duplicate data
  • At-rest encryption to ensure all data leaving the on-premise environment is fully secure
  • Improved data mobility using “cloud to cloud” migration rather than inefficiently moving data between providers via an on-premise hop

These features, along with others, are highly desirable with or without cloud standards in place. Even customers preferring to use object-based interfaces to cloud storage may choose to utilize a gateway that offers access via the CDMI standard to enjoy these added benefits – perhaps a roadmap item for future gateways.

While cloud standards promise native cloud storage compatibility, gateways provide an easy and practical entry to cloud storage today, offering cloud provider interoperability and a wealth of benefits that will continue long after standards are approved.

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Has Cloud Put a Dent in the Data Storage Market?

Posted by Nicos Vekiarides on March 7th, 2012
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While many would say it’s not a matter of “if” but “when,” this week has sparked some storage industry experts to ponder whether the high-margin data storage market is beginning to feel the impact of cloud adoption. To elaborate, let me direct your attention to two of this week’s announcements.

First, results from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker for Q4 2011 indicate a slowdown in the growth of storage spending toward the end of last year. According to IDC, Q4 2011 saw a 3.5% increase in disk storage revenues as compared to Q4 2010. While this is far from a decline, it does represent a decrease in the 7.7% year-over-year growth seen for all of 2011.

Of course, this end of year slowdown could be the result of a number of factors, not the least of which is the disk supply disruption caused by Thai flooding. Interestingly, Dave Raffo postulates in a recent article that rather than the disk shortage, cloud and deduplication may instead be responsible for the revenue decline, as both conspire to reduce the amount of storage capacity businesses require.  In fact, in the case of cloud, the bulk of the margin is shifted from the storage vendors to the cloud providers. It would, of course, be speculative to assume we have hit this inflection point, but it will be interesting to see what the next few quarters have in store.

Second, Google’s announcement of its new ecosystem of enterprise cloud storage solutions, featuring a number of vendors enabling businesses to consume cloud storage with an enterprise-class look-and-feel, security and high performance was noteworthy. Certainly the $30B+ data storage market is an attractive target for cloud storage providers. Google cloud storage offers enterprise-class SLAs, sophisticated security and access controls, a high-performance network and aggressive pricing. To facilitate deployment of Google cloud storage, TwinStrata announced the availability of a free 1TB iSCSI gateway for Google cloud storage customers, presenting a simple and secure way to integrate cloud storage into the enterprise for  a number of use cases including backup, archive, storage consolidation among others. Overall, Google’s announcement is expected to further drive the industry trend toward cloud storage infrastructure.

So are we at a turning point where cloud storage is becoming a mainstream alternative to traditional on-premise storage? Let us know what you think and stay tuned…

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