1. Hybrid data storage environments combining cloud storage with existing storage. For most companies, the notion of moving all of their data to the cloud is not fathomable. However, continuously expanding data storage needs are fueling a need for more capacity. What better way to address this need than with cloud storage? The benefits include access to a secure, limitless pool of storage capacity, no future need for upgrade or replacement and reduced capital expenses. Look for auto-tiering technologies to seamlessly combine hybrid cloud and on-premise environments in a way that operates with existing applications.
2. Private cloud environments in enterprise companies. Enterprises looking to leverage the economies, efficiencies and scale of cloud providers are adopting cloud models in-house, such as OpenStack, for both compute and storage environments. These private clouds offer scale, agility and price/performance typically unmatched by traditional infrastructure solutions and can reside inside a company’s firewall. In the storage space, look for technologies that can combine existing SAN infrastructure and private cloud storage into a unified Cloud SAN.
3. Disaster recovery to the cloud as a viable option. Traditionally, companies that need disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) have relied on dedicated replicated infrastructure at an offsite location to be able to recover from physical disaster. This means paying for idle hardware that’s waiting for a disaster. DR in the cloud, on the other hand, means not having to pay for this infrastructure except when it is needed. The tradeoff? While not necessarily a zero-downtime solution, look for cloud DR with recovery time objectives (RTOs) in a matter of hours.
4. Disaster recovery from the cloud as a new need. What happens to business data stored by SaaS application in the case of a disaster? The truth is most SaaS providers do have a DR strategy, but many businesses will demand a recovery strategy under their control. Look for emergence of solutions that backup SaaS data either locally or to an alternate provider as an extra level of protection.
5. Simplified onboarding of applications to the cloud. Certain business applications can move entirely to the cloud, thereby saving the administrative and maintenance headaches of their hardware/software platforms onsite. Many IT-strapped businesses can benefit from tools to make this migration viable. Look for robust tool sets that can migrate applications to a choice of cloud providers – and also bring those applications back on-premise should the need arise.
6. Non-relational databases for big data. NoSQL databases, like Apache CouchDB, enable tremendous scalability in order to meet the needs of Terabytes and Petabytes of data accessed by millions of users. Big data will force many companies to consider these alternatives to traditional databases and cloud deployment models will simplify the roll-out. Look for vendors providing supported NoSQL solutions.
7. Use of the cloud for analytics. Analytics tend to require a scalable compute and storage environment as well as rather expensive software. Similar to idle hardware for disaster recovery purposes, analytics for many businesses may represent a seasonal need that only runs in short bursts and may not justify purchasing a dedicated software/hardware environment. Analytic environments in the cloud can turn the expense into a “pay-per-use” bill, meeting business goals at a far lower price point.
8. SSD tiers of storage in the cloud. Moving higher performance applications into the cloud doesn’t always guarantee that they will get the level of performance they need from their data storage. By offering high-performance tiers of storage that are SSD-based (i.e. flash), cloud providers will be able to address the needs for predictable and faster application response times.
9. Improvements in data reduction technology. With cloud storage commanding a per GB operating expense, deduplication and compression technologies have become rather ubiqitous in minimizing costs. While some may argue the capacity optimization game has played out, there is still the challenge of capacity optimization on a more global scale across multiple tenants and a challenge for rich media content which does not fare particularly well with today’s reduction technologies. Look for the introduction of new data reduction technologies that address both needs.
10. “Cloud-envy” from cloud laggards. While many companies have already adopted the cloud and many more will adopt in 2012, others may still wait and ponder well past 2012. Regardless of which category a company falls into, the economics and efficiencies of the cloud have become irrefutable. As a result, some of the laggards will likely seek ways to leverage cloud methodologies that improve IT efficiency on-premise. Undoubtedly, some will fall prey to cloudwashing by purchasing traditional IT infrastructure named “cloud” in an attempt to satisfy their “cloud-envy.”

Bottom line? Cloud deployments are becoming simpler and more secure and the economics continue to improve. Which of these trends will your business follow in 2012?

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From time to time, we’ll post articles about how specific partners and customers use HP Cloud Services.  Today, I’d like to introduce TwinStrata’s CEO and co-founder Nicos Vekiarides and Engineering Manager Mark Aldred.

Nicos co-founded TwinStrata four years ago to bring cloud storage to market in a way that is easy for enterprise customers to use. Today, TwinStrata delivers connectivity to cloud storage with an easy to use web-based user interface and a pay as you go business model.

TwinStrata’s CloudArray 3.0 appliance provides access to cloud storage so that it performs seamlessly with customers’ existing IT infrastructure.  The appliance makes cloud storage an attractive option for those enterprise customers, who lack the time to use online storage on their own through APIs. Customers use CloudArray for backup and archiving, offsite storage capacity, and disaster recovery.

According to Nicos, TwinStrata chose to work with HP Cloud Services for three reasons.

First, HP Cloud Services is a good match for TwinStrata, as HP will deliver reliable cloud computing and cloud storage offerings that enterprise customers can trust.

Second, open source software is attractive to application developers and businesses of all sizes, and HP Cloud Services integrates key elements of OpenStack, the emerging standard for open source cloud infrastructure.

Thirdly, working with HP Cloud Services will broaden TwinStrata’s customer market. Through TwinStrata’s CloudArray appliance, traditional hardware and software enterprise customers will soon have access to a business grade cloud provided by HP Cloud Services for their storage needs.

Since HP Cloud Services is still in private beta, TwinStrata is aggressively testing HP Cloud Services’ performance and functionality. Nicos and Mark indicated that HP Cloud Services is performing well in TwinStrata’s tests. “While still in private beta, HP Cloud Services is already very reliable and comparable to other public clouds. We are already impressed,” said Mark Aldred, Engineering Manager, TwinStrata.  Nicos, Mark, and the TwinStrata team said they are happy with they’ve seen, including the high performance levels and the speed with which they were able to make progress. Benchmark tests of HP Cloud Services versus other cloud services have been positive.  Functional testing of HP Cloud Services has been quick and easy, and the RESTful APIs work exactly as expected. HP Cloud Services’ online forum community is already active and responsive. Mark told us that he was very impressed that he received a very accurate response to a question he posted in the HP Cloud Services forum in less than an hour.

Welcome, TwinStrata! We’re pleased to have you as part of the HP Cloud Services family.

A growing number of customers and partners have already joined the HP Cloud Services ecosystem. If you’re already an HP Cloud Services private beta customer or partner, come tell us your story, share and comment on this article. Feel free to tweet this article or share it through Facebook and LinkedIn. If you’re not yet signed up to participate in our private beta, come join us. Sign up now.

PS: Download a free trial of TwinStrata CloudArray cloud storage gateway for instant iSCSI access to HP cloud storage beta.

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So what does all this have to do with 2012 being the year of the private cloud? Let me explain.  Interestingly enough, the study also concluded that this same company could save $5M and cut CO2 emissions by 25,000 tons over the same time period but this time by moving to a private cloud. While most of us already assume that public clouds are housed in highly efficient “green” data centers with tremendous economies of scale, the private cloud scenario modeled in this report makes a strong statement that improved resource utilization can drive huge benefits even when all infrastructure stays local. The study goes on to cite other efficiencies of cloud architectures including improved time-to-market which also apply to both public and private clouds.

Whether moving to public or private clouds, the bottom line is that businesses can realize substantial benefits from embracing cloud — in overall utilization, cost savings, emission savings, speed and agility. These are compelling benefits that may indeed persuade those who have resisted the move of their IT infrastructure outside of their four walls to deploy their own private clouds. With open source technologies like OpenStack gaining momentum, do we have the perfect storm for mass private cloud adoption in 2012?

While it’s certain that we will see an increase in private cloud adoption, reports like this may prompt many companies to consider incremental changes to their existing infrastructures to make them more efficient and “cloud-like.” That means we’ll likely see more hybrid deployments that leverage existing infrastructure, create more efficient multi-tenant environments, yet provide the ability to expand with public and/or private cloud deployments in the future.

In the data storage space, technologies such as CloudArray enable businesses to leverage existing infrastructure on the path to public cloud, private cloud or a combination of both. Enabling technologies are key for companies looking to leverage cloud efficiencies in incremental ways, particularly for those with an eye to keeping their options open in the future. And those options not only include public and private clouds but also a variety of cloud providers in each category.

So is 2012 the year of the private cloud? More likely, it will be the year of all clouds whether public, private or hybrid. Regardless of the cloud categories you select for use as components of your infrastructure strategy, consider adopting an enabling technology that not only improves your efficiencies today but also provides you with the most flexible path to the future.

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Perhaps planning a cloud strategy has led you to consider public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds and/or community clouds – not to mention a few “cloud-washed” derivatives that suspiciously resemble traditional IT. With so many varieties of cloud deployments to choose from, you may be a bit confused about which is right for you.

A recent article in Technology Review, Cloud Computing Defined by Simson L. Garfinkel may help shed some light on the topic. Offering a clear definition of each type of cloud deployment, this article sorts through some of the confusion. As a starting point, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines Cloud Computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

In simpler terms, think of cloud as a highly scalable and elastic IT resource that can be utilized on-demand, typically using a pay-as-you-go model. That said, some private clouds may appear pay-as-you-go only from the perspective of the internal user.  If you are the internal owner, who purchased the cloud infrastructure, the pay-as-you-go model does not apply.

For the most part, cloud deployments fall into four categories:

• Public cloud: A public cloud is owned by a cloud provider and made available to the general public on a multi-tenant, pay-as-you-go basis
• Private cloud: A private cloud is owned and deployed by an organization for internal use as a single tenant, and not typically pay-as-you-go unless hosted by a 3^rd party for dedicated use
• Community cloud: A community cloud is cooperatively shared by a select set of tenants, often by organizations that are related by a common industry
• Hybrid cloud: A hybrid cloud spans the cloud deployment models listed above, enabling applications and data to easily move from one cloud to the other

Although there is no “one-size-fits-all” model, each type of cloud deployment offers unique advantages.  A small company may find it beneficial to maintain zero on-premise infrastructure and, therefore, host all of its operations in the public cloud. On the other hand, companies already owning local infrastructure and multiple data center locations may prefer a private cloud located within the logical (if not physical) four walls of their organization. Community clouds bridge the “multi-tenant gap” between public and private clouds by providing a cloud deployment shared only by trusted companies, often in a common vertical market (i.e. medical, educational, legal, etc).  Many companies may seek to deploy both private and public clouds for specific portions of their operations, preferring a hybrid cloud deployment. In this case, the public cloud portion may serve as an extension of their primary site or in lieu of a traditional secondary or disaster recovery site.

With the many cloud deployment choices available, which is the right one for your business? Well, one variable to consider is ease of deployment. Public clouds are readily available and allow instant access to compute and storage resources, whereas private clouds have a more complex deployment model that involves on-premise infrastructure. If you are looking for deployment speed, public cloud may be the right choice. If you are looking for absolute control, private cloud may be the better choice.

In the cloud storage world, enterprise storage gateways and hybrid storage arrays, like CloudArray, let you choose from all of the cloud deployment models defined above. Thanks to their flexibility, enterprise storage gateways make utilizing the cloud a very simple matter regardless of cloud deployment model. Whether it’s public, private, community or hybrid cloud storage that you decide upon, you can get started with minimal effort.  You can change deployments and/or providers any time without fear of losing data. While security, performance, availability and interoperability are key features of cloud storage gateways, flexibility relative to cloud deployment choices is a significant benefit.  Make sure you evaluate your enterprise storage gateway options carefully to ensure you are getting the maximum flexibility.

Regardless of which cloud deployment model you choose today, an enterprise storage gateway will protect your investment by providing compatibility with future cloud deployments. Let us know what type of cloud deployment best fits the needs of your organization.

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The North Shore Technology Council April breakfast features Chris Winn, Senior Manager with Ernst & Young, MacDonnell Ulsch, CEO and Chief Risk Analyst with ZeroPoint Risk Research and Nicos Vekiarides, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, TwinStrata discussing the risks and benefits of getting in the cloud.

Click here for more information and registration info.

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While the term cloud may seem overused as a result, its original meaning and intention carries a key set of attributes that can be very compelling to businesses of all sizes. True cloud compute, cloud storage or cloud infrastructure is elastic, pay-as-you-go and available on-demand from a virtually unlimited pool of resources. A key attribute of cloud is what we term the “Zero-Friction Entry Point,” meaning you can get started with zero cost and zero risk.

Quite frankly, while we’re always up for a good discussion, it can get rather old fielding questions and drawing comparisons to “cloud washed” products. So, in the interest of helping educate the IT community on how to spot “cloud washing,” we decided to put together a concise (albeit light-hearted) list of 8 sure signs that you’ve purchased a cloud product that’s not really cloud. Without further ado,

8 Sure Signs of a “cloud washed” product

8. The product arrives on four pallets in a Mack truck
7. Your cooling bill doubles and free floor space vanishes
6. The product’s box has a cloud spray-painted on the side
5. You request a “pay-as-you-go” model but instead receive a “36-month easy payment plan”
4. On-demand expansion means 90 days after contacting a sales rep
3. The phone number for on-demand reduction is always busy
2. Your job title is now “cloud administrator”, but you’re doing the same thing as before

and , finally

1. After two years, your sales rep calls to say, “Upgrade time!”

That’s it for now — feel free to share your experiences and any other sure signs of  “cloud washing.”

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Rather than use cloud storage directly by writing to custom APIs, building your own security policies and architecting a performance framework to meet application needs, you may find that on-premise cloud storage software or hardware (i.e. gateways, on-ramps, enablers) make integration simpler.  Purchasing a product that handles security, performance, data reduction and plug-and-play integration can significantly accelerate and simplify deployment.

With a handful of gateway products already on the market that can connect your on-premise environment to cloud storage, a natural question may (or should) be “what is the difference between these products?” above and beyond the aforementioned functionality.

To answer this, we’ve put together a list of 6 differentiating features you should consider when choosing a cloud storage gateway:

1) Dynamic caching policies to meet application needs:  A monolithic cloud storage cache may not be able to handle the performance needs for all applications. A backup application may benefit from a cache consisting of low-cost storage optimized for large sequential access, while an NTFS file system may benefit more from an SSD-based cache, optimized for smaller, more randomized access. Each application may require more or less cache over time. Having application-specific caching policies that are dynamic means you can meet needs of different applications using a single solution.

2) Option to replicate a local copy to the cloud: Some vendors argue that having a full local copy defeats the purpose of cloud storage – not at all true! Imagine replacing a real-time replicated secondary site requiring hardware, infrastructure and maintenance costs with a pay-as-you-go cloud! Or imagine not having a secondary site to begin with and now finding a 2-site replication solution within easy reach. This is a very compelling business proposition, particularly for transactional applications that require a full local copy for latency reasons.

3) In-cloud snapshots: Snapshots are rapidly becoming a key part of modernized backup and, when using the cloud, it is important to find out whether a gateway solution offers snapshots. If yes, are the snapshots copy-on-write and on-premise, meaning potential bandwidth thrashing between the local site and the cloud? Or are the snapshots in-cloud, redirect-on write, meaning no bandwidth penalty or performance penalty and readily available in case of disaster? If you have the option of the latter, you may have gathered that it is far superior.

4) Block and file-level access: It’s amazing to hear arguments from vendors trying to convince users that file access is better than block access for cloud gateways. The reality is that there are advantages to file access and advantages to block access. Supporting both means supporting that widest variety of operating systems, file systems and applications; and there is no longer any argument. Hint: having native block access (like iSCSI) means you can support both.

5) “Zero-friction” entry point to cloud storage: Deploying cloud storage should not mean continuing to spend additional CapEx/OpEx associated with traditional storage infrastructure and incurring the same 3-yr upgrade cycles.  Sure, there are advantages to optimized hardware appliances for accessing cloud storage, but only when needs and budget dictate. A choice of software, hardware and subscription models  with upgrade paths between each are the ideal way to start using cloud storage with minimal risk/cost and the ability to grow.

6) In-cloud disaster recovery and Compute-Anywhere capability: Once your data is in the cloud, you can access it anywhere, but how about in the cloud? Why not be able to leverage unlimited pay-as-you-go cloud compute cycles for disaster recovery or test. Beyond disaster recovery, your data or snapshots of data can and should “work” for you in the cloud. You can even leverage Big Data without dedicated processing resources by using cloud compute. Think about a vision of a hybrid data center and how this capability can enhance IT.

In summary, all cloud gateways, on-ramps, or enablers are not equal and it takes looking beyond  the similarities in features to understand whether they will meet the needs specific to your environment and grow to meet your future needs. It pays to look under the covers before purchasing…

Perhaps you have found a cloud storage solution that has all of these features. If you haven’t, we suggest you consider a cloud storage solution that does….

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Is Data Growth Getting You Down? Then Look Up To the Cloud!

• Thursday, February 10, 2001 
• TwinStrata Offices
• 24 Prime Parkway, Suite 301A
• Natick, MA 01760
• 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM 

TwinStrata Can Help Colleges & Universities Capitalize on Cloud Storage…Simply, Securely, and Affordably

Are you looking for ways to battle shrinking budgets yet still address the need for ever-increasing storage capacity, efficient off-site data protection and affordable disaster recovery across your campuses?

Using TwinStrata CloudArray®, an affordable iSCSI data protection and disaster recovery cloud storage solution, can bring relief. It’s non-intrusive and non-disruptive, requiring no “rip and replace” of any existing application or infrastructure. 

Attend our Higher Education Lunch session on Thursday, February 10, 2011 and learn how TwinStrata can help you:

• Turn capex into opex  
• Balance your capacity demand and cost
• Seamlessly scale IT using cloud storage
• Reduce IT complexity and increase IT efficiency

The program will include:

• Lunch
• A $25 VISA Gift card for attending
• An opportunity to meet our Development and Management Teams
• Participation in a CloudArray workshop
• A grand prize drawing (must be in attendance to win)

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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…

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IT administrators continue to face the age-old challenges of storage management complexity and cost while the burden of managing exponential data growth has businesses of all sizes considering the best ways to store, protect, and archive their files, Exchange, and SharePoint data. The need to maximize resources and infrastructure, optimize storage requirements, and improve efficiencies remain top drivers for most of these businesses today. 

With all of these factors to consider, one of the most difficult skill sets for IT to find and retain are expert level administrators for specific storage management disciplines including storage administrators.

When you deploy an Enterprise or Mid-Range storage array, you generally need a team of people who are specialized in configuring, provisioning, and managing those storage arrays (let alone the compliance, disaster recovery, and other more advanced storage specializations).  Decisions made daily include RAID configuration, performance tuning, device management, storage pool provisioning, management of remote replication, management of consistency groups, and management of capacity and storage tiering. These are highly specialized and vendor specific skills. They will extend out to your application servers with CLI and API command sets which must be used to perform even simple client side tasks.

Most, if not all of these technology skill demands will disappear once you deploy Cloud Storage. Of course, if you deploy a Private Cloud, you will merely be moving the skill pools to a different area, but they will still largely vanish from your day-to-day data center operations.  With Public Clouds, they will go away almost immediately and entirely.

As Cloud Storage gets provisioned through CloudArray, your administrators will largely be working at the level of an average system administrator skill set when it comes to provisioning and managing storage.  Configuration requirements will be reduced to basic volume count, volume size, encryption requirements, and page size requirements.  None of this requires advanced degrees, decades of storage management experience, or high level vendor certifications.

By deploying a Cloud Storage model – especially for routine use cases such as online backup, archive, and disaster recovery operations – you can begin to free up highly skilled administrators and other IT specialists to redeploy and focus on other critical areas of your IT operations. Cloud Storage doesn’t necessarily mean direct reductions in headcount. Efficiency is in part about resource re-deployment without having to incur additional costs for people or infrastructure. Conversely, Cloud Storage might even allow growth in areas you otherwise couldn’t hire into before.

Essentially, as more leading-edge technologies begin to creep into IT shops and data centers, Cloud Storage is a direct and immediate way to reduce management complexity and costs affording IT the chance to spend more time on business applications, business continuity, and strategic IT planning and projects.

The best way to see this is to download and try it for yourself.  Visit www.TwinStrata.com for more information.

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