TwinStrata Blog » Cloud storage use cases

Breaking the Storage Array Life Cycle with Cloud Storage: Part III

Nicos Vekiarides — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:30:03 +0000

While Part I and Part II of this series spelled out some of the economic benefits and deployment models of cloud storage, today’s installment will take a more pragmatic look at how to deploy cloud storage in environments that already have traditional storage infrastructure. While replacing traditional storage with cloud storage will break the traditional storage array life cycle, a complete “forklift” replacement may seem a bit of a stretch.

A more conservative approach might be to identify data suitable for cloud storage such as secondary copies, backups, off-site data and/or archives. Interestingly, archives are often stored on traditional onsite storage to make them easily accessible to meet compliance requirements. However, looking at the chart below, you can see that ESG’s research estimates a very rapid growth rate for archive data, approximately 56% per year.

With literally hundreds of thousands of Petabytes of archives to store over the next few years, the benefits of offloading archives or infrequently accessed data from traditional storage are numerous. In fact, transitioning this data to cloud storage can extend the traditional life cycle of storage arrays beyond the typical 3-5 year time frame. Imagine a 6-10 year storage array life cycle instead. That would result in a reduction of capital investment in storage infrastructure by half and introduce a significantly more efficient just-in-time, pay-as-you-go model.

So how do you leverage tiers of cloud storage in a manner that integrates seamlessly into your existing storage infrastructure? Well, in combination with a cloud storage gateway or appliance like CloudArray, you may want to consider storage tiering software. Auto-tiering software can be found in storage virtualization solutions, data classification solutions, and even in some hypervisor solutions. Once you choose an auto-tiering framework, you can immediately begin to extend the life cycle of existing storage arrays and leverage the benefits of cloud storage by selectively offloading infrequently used data. Look for a more detailed discussion of auto-tiering solutions in a future post.

In the meantime, download CloudArray today to start enjoying all the benefits of cloud storage and discover how easy it is to break the traditional storage array life cycle.

Download a Free Copy of the Info-Tech Cloud Backup Vendor Landscape Report

Nicos Vekiarides — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:30:21 +0000

Info-Tech Research Group recently published a very thorough 30+ page cloud storage vendor landscape report, the first of its kind that compares cloud storage gateways and appliances head-to-head. The report compares product offerings from a number of vendors including CoreVault, CTERA, Nasuni, Panzura, Storsimple, TwinStrata and Zmanda, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each respective solution. It goes on to choose a set of champions based on specific use cases that include:

Mounting Storage to Cloud IaaS Servers
Unstructured Data/NAS Replacement
Global Distributed Enterprises
Private Clouds

You can download a FREE copy of the report here.

I should mention that this report was not commissioned or sponsored by TwinStrata and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of all solutions, including ours.

If you are using or considering adding cloud storage to your IT environment, we think you will find this report very illuminating.

6 Key Features of Cloud Storage Gateways (On-ramps or Enablers)

Nicos Vekiarides — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:00:38 +0000

Are you considering cloud storage for your business? There are many reasons you should. Using innovative cloud technology, IT is solving data storage problems in new ways. Whether it’s for off-site data protection, disaster recovery or just storage capacity expansion, the pay-as-you go model pioneered by a number of cloud storage providers can be very compelling.

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….

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…

Why a Massachusetts High School Picked TwinStrata CloudArray over Competition

admin — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:26:33 +0000

Kyle Jones, technology manager, Essex Agricultural and Technical High School in Hathorne, MA tested cloud gateway products from Nasuni and TwinStrata to meet specific IT budget and operational objectives. The reasons TwinStrata won out are worth reading about, especially if you are part of a small to medium size business considering cloud storage for either offsite backup, archive, or disaster recovery and business continuity.

Mr. Jones was interviewed recently by TechTarget Senior Site Editor, Andrew Burton where he discussed his requirements, offsite storage/data protection options, and why CloudArray was a better business and technology solution choice to handle the school’s backup to cloud storage needs.

You can read more about it here: High School Deploys TwinStrata CloudArray Cloud Storage Gateway

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.

TwinStrata’s CEO is Tapped by ESJ for 2011 Cloud Predictions

admin — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 03:54:38 +0000

The Year Ahead in Cloud Computing

The pressure to create a cloud presence will only become stronger in 2011. What IT needs to know to be prepared for Cloud Storage is outlined in an Enterprise Systems Journal (ESJ) article authored by TwinStrata’s CEO and Co-Founder, Nicos Vekiarides.

ESJ approached Nicos for this article because they wanted an inside perspective of the emerging cloud storage market. TwinStrata is a leader in cloud storage enablement solutions to provide companies of any size with iSCSI SAN solutions for offsite data protection, archive, and disaster recovery.

Please take a moment and read the ESJ article: The Year Ahead in Cloud Computing

TwinStrata Delivers Newest Version of its Leading CloudArray® Offsite Data Protection and Disaster Recovery Solution

admin — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:17:51 +0000

CloudArray® Version 2.0 is available in both virtual and physical appliance configurations.

The new CloudArray Version 2.0 includes a broad range of updates designed to further enhance the overall operation, reliability, and performance of CloudArray’s robust and proven feature set for offsite data protection, archive, and disaster recovery. Additionally, CloudArray 2.0 expands its reach to include direct integration with Mezeo, Peer1, and Scalitycloud storage platforms, offering customers more choice and flexibility when implementing a cloud storage strategy. Other CloudArray 2.0 enhancements include support for HA clustering, Solaris interoperability, alert and portal improvements and performance improvements to the virtual appliance.

CloudArray V2.0 is available today from TwinStrata and through its network of partners. For more information, visit www.twinstrata.com/cloudarray, email sales@twinstrata.com or call 508-651-0199.

You can also try CloudArray FREE for 30 days: www.twinstrata.com/cloudarray_evaluation

TwinStrataCloudArray is a proven solution that can significantly reduce capex/opex by enabling companies of all sizes to easily adopt offsite data protection and disaster recovery solutions in minutes without any changes to existing applications or need for new programming or APIs in order to connect with cloud storage providers. TwinStrata provides enterprise-class data protection solutions that are simple, affordable, and secure. These solutions leverage the scalability and efficiency of cloud storage while maintaining the availability, performance, and security of local storage. CloudArray software provides a substantial advantage over traditional off-site storage solutions, with a pay-as-you-go model, unlimited elastic capacity, local performance, in-cloud snapshots, AES256 bit encryption, and on-site, off-site or in-the-cloud access to data.

Deploy Cloud Storage Before Your Users Do

Nicos Vekiarides — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:30:30 +0000

I glanced through an interesting read last week of a CIO who refused to address an IT issue for a business manager because the issue involved cloud services. What makes the story interesting is that the manager had decided to bypass IT by using public cloud services without authorization. While perception of this manager’s actions within his organization may range from heroic to questionable, it is fair to assume there was some justification why this user circumvented standard IT process.

In many instances, the justification of an act like this is straightforward: increased speed and reduced cost of IT deployments. What happens when a project surfaces that requires a few Terabytes of storage immediately and can’t wait a week for a provisioning request to be fulfilled or an expensive hardware PO to get approved? What happens when users are fed up with the speed of tape restores and instead take matters into their own hands and back up their data to the cloud — using their own security or none at all? Both cases represent situations most businesses would rather avoid, but with the prevalence of on-demand cloud-based IT, it is often nearly impossible for internal IT organizations to match the agility and flexibility enabled by the cloud that is readily available externally.

Preventing Cloud Chaos

How do we prevent potential “cloud chaos” in IT environments? One apparent solution would be tighter lockdowns to disallow users from accessing the cloud at all. A better solution would be to standardize on a set of practices for using the cloud that provides a supplement to in-house IT and is secure and compliant without putting an organization at risk.

In the case of storage, a good solution is to allow users to harness the elasticity and agility of cloud storage, through secure and standardized interfaces. While cloud storage is not always a replacement for on-premise storage, it can easily satisfy the need for rapid, incremental capacity expansion that sometimes cannot be fulfilled using internal IT resources. It can also address use cases that require bursts in storage capacity, such as test, development, business analytics or other tasks that run infrequently enough that they do not justify dedicated resources.

With cloud SAN and data protection products like CloudArray, you can easily create standardized policies around how cloud storage is consumed. These policies include encryption, preferred providers, availability and cost metrics. You can create thin-provisioned and secure data volumes, each up to 384TB, for immediate use by applications on a pay-as-you-go basis. Once these volumes are no longer needed, they can be deleted. Because these data volumes look and feel like a local SAN storage, they are also simple and familiar to manage. Internal IT and cloud storage can now co-exist seamlessly, giving users the best of all worlds.

Beware of the outlaws

Perhaps this is not last time you’ll hear about “cloud outlaws” bypassing internal IT. Whether you view this as a present threat, future concern or unlikely event, you can prevent this from happening by adopting cloud services in a standardized framework that IT can administer and manage; in the process, you can also substantially enhance the capabilities and agility of your IT department.

Does standardizing cloud storage make sense for your organization?

5 Reasons to Back Up Your Data Remotely with CloudArray

Nicos Vekiarides — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:00:13 +0000

With a variety of ways to back up your data off-site, ranging from tape transport to online backup software, why back up to cloud storage via CloudArray™? If you consider all options, there a number of good reasons to choose CloudArray for off-site backup and we thought we would share five of them:

5) It works with your existing backup software. You’ve already made the investment in backup software because it meets most of your needs. Why change your backup process, deal with a learning curve and risk losing functionality? Simply point your backup jobs to CloudArray disks, which appear local, and CloudArray takes care of securely moving the data off-site.
4) Network bandwidth is expensive. Even if you have lots of external bandwidth, you don’t want backup to monopolize it. Cloudarray caching minimizes the amount of bandwidth that goes through your external internet connection. The cache can use any type of local storage with cache sizes ranging from a few GB to a full local copy, providing a very fast first line of restore without going to the external network. Compression/deduplication further reduce your bandwidth requirements and some of our upcoming technology that minimizes bandwidth may just knock your socks off.
3) Your data needs security. With CloudArray, data is not only encrypted in-flight via SSL, but it is also encrypted at-rest when it is stored at your provider. That means every bit of data that leaves your premises is encrypted and stays that way until you need it back.
2) Access your data when you need it, where you need it. When we say Compute Anywhere™ access, we mean your data is instantly available on-site, off-site or even in cloud compute, such as Amazon EC2. All you need is an instance of CloudArray software, your configuration credentials and our one-button restore process. Unlike most online backup, your data is not just stored in a one-way vault that requires hours or days to retrieve a single file. Unlike tape, your data is available immediately, not just for disaster recovery, but also for validation, test or development purposes. When was the last time you validated your backups?
1) Cost savings and choice. There are no capital or administrative expenses for the off-site data stored by CloudArray; no dedicated hardware or facilities. CloudArray gives you a choice of cloud storage providers so you always have access to the best pricing on the planet. Want Amazon RRS starting at $0.10 GB/mo? No problem. Want to rotate backups across multiple providers? We can do that, too.

Finally, CloudArray is simple to use. It’s a downloadable virtual appliance you can start using in 30 minutes.

Still need convincing? Try CloudArray free for 30-days. It’s on us, including all the cloud storage you need.