TwinStrata Blog » Amazon

TwinStrata and PEER 1 Team Up to Deliver Enterprise Class Cloud Storage

admin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:14:42 +0000

TwinStrata conintues to broaden its partner ecosystem with leading cloud storage providers. Here is yet another example…

NATICK, Mass. and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — TwinStrata, Inc., the leading innovator in iSCSI SAN, data protection and disaster recovery solutions using cloud storage, today announced it has achieved Bronze Partner Program status with international hosting provider, PEER 1 Hosting (TSX: PIX), further demonstrating TwinStrata’s continued commitment to supporting the industry’s key cloud storage providers along with their customers.

Read the full press release…

Cloud Storage Performance: I/O Does Matter

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:57:42 +0000

One of the first decisions you will need to make when tuning your environment for Cloud Storage I/O is what page size you will use to perform writes to your Cloud Storage Provider (CSP). This is one of the configuration parameters you will enter when configuring a new volume in CloudArray.

Page sizing is an important consideration, and represents the smallest unit of data that will be sent to your CSP from your CloudArray appliance, or read back when needed. Choose a size that is too small and you may have to do a lot more I/Os if you need to move a lot of data in bulk. Choose a size that’s too big and you will move more data than you need to.

For example, if your application needs to read a lot of small chunks of data that don’t already reside in your CloudArray cache, then CloudArray will have to issue read requests to the CSP for each of those chunks. If each chunk was 64K in length, and they weren’t contiguous, then CloudArray might have to issue 4 separate read requests for that data. If the data were contiguous, then only 1 read request would need to be made.

Larger Page Sizes will result in more data being read than is needed for the current operation, but it may help performance if that data is needed at any point while it is still in cache. In CloudArray, you can choose variable page sizes from 128 KB (default) all the way to 2 MB. 512 KB is the recommended value for backups and in cases where there is a lot of sequential I/O.

If you do a lot of random small block I/O, you should choose the smaller default page size. This will prevent having to move a lot of empty data between your CSP and the CloudArray appliance. A large page size here will cause slower overall performance since a lot more pages will have to be written to accommodate the data requirements. Likewise, if you are doing backups, you will want the 512 KB (or larger) page size. This will result in fewer overall writes compared to a smaller block size and performance will increase.

This can have an impact in your cost model as well, but nowhere nearly as much as some vendors selling file system-based appliances would have you believe. Some CSP’s will charge a small per transaction fee for each read or write request you make. For Amazon S3 for example, the charge is $0.00001 per write transaction. And so for a 1TB backup, that amounts to 8,388,608 x 128KB transactions, or $83. If you used a 512KB page size, that would amount to 2,097,152 write transactions, or $20 for the write transaction costs. Reads are cheaper by an order of ten. That’s a far cry from the $1K+ figure for a 100GB write that another vendor would cost you.

Visit www.TwinStrata.comfor more info about CloudArray.

Five Reasons to Evaluate Cloud Storage for Data Protection Today

admin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:50:02 +0000

No doubt you have been hearing a lot about Cloud Storage, its advantages, and how it makes a lot of sense as a way to affordably move data offsite without having to deal with Tape or the expense of maintaining a second DR site.

But you still haven’t tried it.

You may be concerned about the security, or integration, or infrastructure costs. You may b e short staffed and short budget and just trying to keep up with daily demands. But you keep hearing about the benefits, and how it could help your operations today.

But you still haven’t tried it.

So without any further ado, here are 5 reasons you should download and evaluate today:

1. It’s Easy.

All you have to do is go to www.cloudarray.com and click the “SignUp Now” now button. You will be asked a few short questions, and then you will be issued a license key good for 30 days you can use to activate your trial. You will also be able to download a copy of our Virtual Appliance for Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware, or Amazon EC2. Simply download the files and install them in your favorite HyperVisor. You won’t need a VMware expert, or Network expert, or MS expert, or even a storage admin to get up and running. Basic system administration skills are all that is required.

2. HyperVisors are Free.

Now some of you are thinking that you don’t have an existing Virtual Infrastructure (VI) and you don’t want to build one just to evaluate a new piece of software. Fair Enough, but you don’t need to build a complex VI to run CloudArray. CloudArray can run on just about any 64 bit platform with a modern operating system. For example, while it will run in Hyper-V or ESX/ESXi of course, but it will also run in VMware Workstation, and it will even run in VMware player. VMware player is free, although you shouldn’t expect much performance out of it, and stability might also be an issue, but it will work. Also, ALL VMware products, from vSphere all the way down to Workstation, can be downloaded for a free 60 day trial. None of these downloads and installs requires any advanced product knowledge. All are easily installable and have defaults prebuilt that will get you up and running.

3. It’s Secure

If you will be using real data as your test load, you can configure CloudArray to encrypt the data before sending it to the Cloud Service Provider. CloudArray uses 256 bit AES encryption, and you retain the keys (they don’t get sent to the CSP or to TwinStrata at any time). You won’t even have to worry about deleting the data when you are done. Just delete the keys and you are safe and secure.

4. You don’t even need a CSP

If you are just getting started, you probably don’t have a relationship with a CSP. We can help you there, and will provide temporary credentials so you can store up to 100GB of data for 30 days at a public CSP without charge.

5. It integrates easily

Once your new CloudArray storage appliance is up and running, you can integrate your existing applications with Cloud Storage as easily as you would mount a new volume. Step one is to create a new LUN and assign it to a server. Step 2 is to mount that LUN on the server and assign it to your application to use. There is no step 3 required. Go ahead and use your new volume just as you would local storage.

Amazon S3 RRS Cloud Storage — Secondary storage tiers at 33% savings

Nicos Vekiarides — Thu, 27 May 2010 02:08:55 +0000

Amazon recently announced S3 RRS starting at $0.10/GB per month, a very palatable 33% less than S3 standard storage. What’s the catch? RRS means reduced redundancy storage, a tier of storage that maintains fewer copies of data than Amazon S3 standard service. According to Amazon, S3 standard storage provides “99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year” and can sustain “the concurrent loss of data in two facilities.” RRS storage provides “99.99% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year” and can “sustain the loss of data in a single facility.”

Why is this interesting to CloudArray customers? Because many CloudArray solutions involve secondary tiers of storage in the cloud with full copies of primary data on-premise. In these cases, RRS is a great cost-saving tradeoff for the secondary storage tier in the cloud with very little impact on overall data availability thanks to the full on-premise copy.

It is important to use this new tier of storage wisely. For those solutions using primary tiers of storage in the cloud without full onsite copies, it may make sense to stick with the standard S3 service.

Because CloudArray makes storage providers and policies flexible and transparent, our customers now have the benefit of a more cost-effective tier of storage for backup, data replication and business continuity solutions to Amazon.

A Move to Cloud Storage, Companies Re-Think Data Protection Strategies

Robert Infantino — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:50:48 +0000

Ongoing discussions with customers on their challenges with existing data protection solutions are leading to changes within their data center. Customers are frustrated with the current data protection process. More specifically, storing information off-site on tape where it can take anywhere from a few hours to as much as a week to restore information. “This is just plain unacceptable and costly”. Human intervention, misappropriation of data, special security transports for tapes that contain certain types of information are all adding to the latency and cost of storing and retrieving data off-site and on tape.

New technologies and solutions with ROI measured in months are driving the need for change. Once such technology is Cloud storage. One of the many uses for Cloud storage is as a target device for data protection applications. Meaning, as opposed to pointing a data protection application to a tape device or even a disk system, point it to the Cloud. Easily accessible from anywhere around the globe, companies [applications] can securely store and access data in real time, cost effectively and with ease. Tape management and off-site tape storage challenges are mitigated or eliminated.

In the Solutions section of TwinStrata.com and on their respective blog we provide a list of data protection solutions and Cloud storage providers that are qualified to operate with CloudArray software. The list of data protection applications are from well established companies such as Oracle (RMAN), Symantec (Backup Exec), Vizioncore (VRanger Pro) and younger companies such as Veeam, PHD Virtual (esXpress). Cloud storage providers include Amazon.com (S3), EMC Atmos, AT&T and others. These applications and providers work together with CloudArray software to protect data and quickly retrieve information at a moments notice.

Check back from time to time, we will be adding more applications to the list of CloudArray supported applications and Cloud storage providers.

Also, Twinstrata is offering a free 30-day trial of CloudArray software. Click here for link.