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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
Best Storage
Products of 2015
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
SNAPSHOT 1
Backup hardware
shoppers prefer
big name vendors
Storage predictions
ridiculous or sublime?
HYPER-CONVERGENCE
SNAPSHOT 2
Backup buyers
get discounts,
concessions
Media mashup
might be best for
data protection
PROTECT
READ-WRITE / KATO
New tools
for scaling NAS
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
EDITORS LETTER
RICH CASTAGNA
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
Predictions
to give you a
leg up on 2016
Vendors and analysts share their
industry insights to help you prepare
for the rest of the year.
ground to cover as my email inbox spilled over with dozensnay, scores!of predictions on the future of data
storage, pouring in from the aforementioned constituencies. Some were pretty insightful, most were blatantly
self-serving, and still others were good for a chuckle or
two. Without naming names, here are some inbox gems.
Contrary to popular belief, tape will not die in 2016
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
Im not even sure I know what this one means. But if were
living in the age of software-defined storage and this prediction is correct, does that mean we should look forward
to hardware-defined storageor hardware-defined software? Whatever it means, Ill be sure to keep an eye out for
it in 2016. I guess what they really mean is that hardware
does actually matter and despite software-defined showing up in front of every conceivable data center thing these
days, we still have hardware and its still pretty darned
important. I couldnt agree morealthough I mightve
said it a little differently.
In this case, the prognosticators excitement is understandable as this prediction on the future of data storage
does come from one of the LTO Consortium members. I
was once excited by LTFS, but its been many years now
and there are only a handful of products built around that
technology. What really caught my eye, however, was the
use of the acronym tNAS. That got me revving up the
Google machine to see who minted that acronym. Frankly,
I was afraid that I wasnt in the know and maybe tNAS
RICH CASTAGNA
is TechTargets VP of Editorial.
STORAGE REVOLUTION
JON TOIGO
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
Defining
softwaredefined storage
Most of the software-defined stuff we
see is rehashed or proprietary tech, but
two products stand out in this crowd.
FOR A FEW years now, folks have been pushing the idea that
server virtualizationand its correlatives, software-defined networks and software-defined storageis a panacea for everything thats been holding back IT service
delivery.
The mantra is easy to grasp: less hardware and centralized management equals lower cost of operation and
reduced total cost of ownership. But reality has not seen
the delivery of this value proposition in very many shops
and many operators, including me, have been losing our
collective religion.
In the storage realm, the software-defined storage
(SDS) market has been hampered by the limited vision
and proprietary objectives of the leading hypervisor
vendors.
There are really only two things Ive seen in the software-defined storage market over the past year that have
even remotely impressed:
n
The
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
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About us
I/O throughput and delivers ridiculously fast I/O processing at an extraordinarily low cost per I/O
The archival gateway virtual machine (VM) is an innovation from Crossroads Systems, which was formally
announced at the end of 2015. Crossroads has been delivering archive gateways for quite some time under the
brand name StrongBox. They were among the first to see
the promise of the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) as a
means to bridge production file system-based storage to
file and object archive, preferably using tape or tape cloud.
The latter, the tape cloud, was pioneered by Crossroads
partner, Fujifilm, a company that continues to do the hard
work of growing the efficiencies, capacity and resiliency
of magnetic tape.
Crossroads smartly enabled a generic server with a
preinstalled version of LTFS to give it the ability to take
files and objects from production storage and move them
transparently to extremely high-capacity tape in accordance with archival policy. They initially targeted the two
leading repositories of files, NetApp filers and Microsoft
file servers, and made short work of the integration of
production and archive data storage bridging.
The relationship with Fujifilm gave them the ability to
extend the bridge across a WAN to an archival cloud service called the Dternity Media Cloud. Using tape provides
a means to seed the Dternity cloud when there is too much
data to transfer cost effectively across a wire, and also as
a means to retrieve a substantial amount of data from the
archive when necessary and re-deploy it into production
storage.
The other part of your infrastructure is capture storagethe storage thats optimized for high-performance
access and fast IOPS. Theres no shortage of kit makers
STORAGE FEBRUARY 2016
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
over the next few months, as the company has its second
round of SPC-1 benchmark tests certified, showing how
you can squeeze over a million IOPS out of an economical
server/storage kit of your own choice.
While I have been listening to the woo peddlers around
software-defined-everything basically bend the ideas to
serve their proprietary ends, it is rewarding to see some
reasons to keep the faith in the software-defined storage
market. These are two. n
JON WILLIAM TOIGO is a 30-year IT veteran, CEO and managing
principal of Toigo Partners International, and chairman of the Data
Management Institute.
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
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data protection
Kato: New
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Storage Products
of the Year
2015
Find out which 18 products from the past year
are on the cutting edge of technology.
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STORAGE
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
GOLD
H
STORAGE
MAGAZINE
PRODUCTS
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
SILVER
10
H
STORAGE
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
BRONZE
11
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STORAGE
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
BACKUP HARDWARE
ExaGrid EX32000E
The ExaGrid EX32000E backup deduplication appliance
is a scale-out disk system built on ExaGrids GRID architecture, with the latest 4.9 version upgraded to support
RMAN for Oracle databases. The two previous upgrades
increased capacity from 14 to 25 appliances in a GRID and
increased the number of data centers supported to 16 for
cross-site disaster recovery.
The company targets small to midrange customers with
10 appliance models of various sizes that can be installed
in a configuration that does deduplication and replication
without interfering with the backup process. The ExaGrid
EX32000E uses adaptive deduplication where the deduplication and replication are done in parallel with backup
while system resources are provided to the backups to
reduce the backup window.
The backups are written directly to the landing zone
with the most recent backups maintained in their full
original state ready for requests. The ExaGrid EX32000E
system does instant recovery of virtual machines from the
landing zone. If the primary virtual machine is not available, the administrator can recover and run a virtual machine from the ExaGrid system within minutes. The local
restores, instant virtual machine recoveries, audit copies
and tape copies do not require rehydration. Instant virtual
machine recovery occurs in seconds to minutes much
faster than inline deduplication, which requires data rehydration. ExaGrid EX32000E backups occur in parallel
GOLD
12
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
SILVER
BACKUP HARDWARE
13
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
BRONZE
BACKUP HARDWARE
14
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
GOLD
updates to this version include the ability to create custom reports, automatic validation of file storage and DFS
namespace resources, and role-based access to StorageX
features.
StorageX was scored the highest among the group of
nine finalists, which included automation, provisioning
and performance monitoring tools. Judges gave the Data
Dynamics Inc. products the highest scores for its ease of
use and manageability, and for performance and functionality. One judge said StorageX 7.6 was an essential update
to the product because it makes the product more competitive with other offerings and offers several advantages
such as automated file storage management. Another
judge said it was unparalleled for file migration needs
and predicted Data Dynamics Inc.
StorageX software could save everyone 30% of new storage costs.
Judges also acknowledged that
Microsoft DFS management is
a narrow market, but one that is
worth pursuing because the file
systems are often complicated
and lack management features.
Data Dynamics Inc. StorageX
7.6 is sold through the channel
and the list price starts at $500
per TB. n
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15
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
SILVER
16
H
STORAGE
MAGAZINE
PRODUCTS
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
BRONZE
the upgrade included the ability to virtualize storage volumes up to 16 exabytes in size. Storage tiering and data
migration capability was also improved. Users can now
use pre-defined or custom workload profiles to maximize
the utilization of flash and caches. Another new feature of
Federator 3.0 is dynamic quality of service, which has the
ability to throttle throughput to guarantee performance.
Support was also expanded in
this release: VMware vSphere
APIs for Array Integration and
NFS are now compatible with
Federator SDS.
ProphetStor claims Federator SDS is a cross-system
manager that was developed to
break vendor lock-in and create a horizontally orchestrated
storage platform.
However, one judge claimed
ProphetStor could have a hard
time getting support from other storage vendors because
it commoditizes storage control. That judge also noted the
products innovation could make up for any potential support issues and still help it move farther into the market.
The out-of-band nature and ability to federate is clever,
fully functional and innovative, giving it a reasonable
chance for success, he said. n
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
GOLD
in functionality.
One judge said there is nothing else like DataCores
Adaptive Parallel I/O on the market, and he called the
software potentially revolutionary. Another judge noted
that most software-defined storage products, or storage
virtualization, are not capable of parallel I/O. More people ought to be evaluating SANsymphony, said one judge.
The Adaptive Parallel I/O software is an upgrade to
the DataCore SANsymphony-V10 storage virtualization
product, which can pool capacity across heterogeneous
storage hardware and provide storage management capabilities. The DataCore SANsymphony-V software can run
on standard x86 servers. Pricing starts at less than $5,000
per node.
One judge cautioned that the DataCore software is designed for storage in Microsoft Windows Server environments. He said DataCore needs a Linux version. n
18
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STORAGE
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
SILVER
19
H
STORAGE
MAGAZINE
PRODUCTS
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
BRONZE
20
H
STORAGE
MAGAZINE
PRODUCTS
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
SolidFire SF9605
SolidFire only does all-flash storage, beginning in
2011 during the early days of all-flash in the enterprise.
The startups main innovation comes from its operating
system software that delivers features such as the quality
of service (QoS), which helped SolidFire distinguish its
products value early on.
In 2015, SolidFire, which has
since been acquired by Net-App,
rolled out version eight of its
Element OS, a version known
as Oxygen, and the SolidFire
SF9605 storage node in 2015.
The SolidFire SF9605 scales to
44.5 TB of effective capacity and
50,000 predictable input/output operations per second.
Features added to Element over the years have helped
SolidFire transition from a vendor selling exclusively to
service providers to one with customers split between
providers and large enterprises. Advanced data protection
functionality and expanded multi-tenant security were
key focuses of Oxygen.
New features include synchronous replication, and
snapshot replication and scheduling. Synchronous replication writes data coming into the system to primary
and secondary sites at the same time, and is an important
feature for enterprises.
SolidFire already supportedasynchronous replication,
GOLD
21
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
SILVER
22
H
STORAGE
MAGAZINE
PRODUCTS
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
BRONZE
23
H
STORAGE
MAGAZINE
PRODUCTS
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
GOLD
About us
24
H
STORAGE
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
SILVER
The 2U hardware holds 24 hard disk drives or SAS-connected enterprise multilevel cell (eMLC) NAND flash
drives and tops out at 40 TB of raw capacity. The vendor
claims in-memory data reduction can boost effective
capacity to around 120 TB. Projected use cases include
midrange enterprises that run VMware virtual servers,
virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and line-of-business
applications for resource planning and customer relationship management.
Judges were impressed
by the way Reduxio optimizes and continuously
protects data, particularly
the ability to roll back to
any point-in-time snapshots. One evaluator wrote
that Reduxio was innovative for (its) use of metadata in a block storage system that
supports infinite snaps [and] intelligent tiering.
Another judge described the Reduxio HX550 as a
clever hybrid array that combines brilliant data protection with data reduction, granular storage tiering and
automated consistency.
Reduxio said its wizard-based installation takes about
10 minutes. The vendor claims its storage costs around $1
per usable GB with data reduction. Reduxio HX550 arrays
carry a three-year warranty. n
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
BRONZE
26
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
Barracuda Backup
BACKUP HARDWARE
NetApp AltaVault
n
n
SolidFire SF9605
About us
Backup buyers
seek bargains
27
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
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Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
Snapshot 1
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
Quantum
5%
Fujitsu
11
Hitachi
1 6%
Oracle
1 4%
n PURCHASED
FROM
n SHORT LIST
Sepaton
(Hitachi)
DW
hat features were
38% Scalability
35% Ease of implementation
11
Spectra Logic
3%
20% Deduplication
NetApp
7%
IBM
9%
HPE
12%
EMC
18%
Dell
19%
11%
11% Snapshots/replication
14%
20%
About us
DT
he average number of TB backed up:
28
HYPER-CONVERGENCE
An in-depth look
at hyper-converged
systems
Despite limitations, the fast deployment and
easy management of hyper-converged appliances
make them attractive.
BY ERIC SLACK
KOYA79/ISTOCK
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STORAGE FEBRUARY 2016
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Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
architecture from which users or integrators can assemble a complete system (such as the Cisco/NetApp FlexPods).
The primary value of a converged system for customers is a reduction in deployment time. Convergence
essentially takes the integration out of building compute
infrastructures, simplifying the implementation of offthe-shelf components, or it might just remove the design
step as in the case of reference architectures, which still
require some assembly. The scale of the typical product
is fairly large as well, in terms of both physical size and
capacity, with many converged infrastructures taking up
most of a data center rack.
While converged systems bundle rack-level components into an integrated offering, hyper-converged infrastructures combine the compute, storage and networking
functions into the same chassis. These infrastructures can
be assembled from independent hardware and software
components by users or integrators, or companies can buy
a hyper-converged appliancea turnkey, single-vendor
product that includes comprehensive support.
30
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Toigo: Defining
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storage
Comprehensive management.
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
n
Primary data
protection primer
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
2015 Products
of the Year
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
An HCA is a turnkey
product that, at a minimum, manages and simplifies
the setup and initial configuration of the product and,
ideally, provides simpler operation.
About us
31
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Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
32
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
33
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
ERIC SLACK
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
34
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Storage predictions,
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Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
Snapshot 2
Backup buyers lean on vendors to bring home bargains
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
No
discount
1%-10%
18%
13%
21%
Extra discount
25%-50%
8%
8%
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Dont know
42%
Backup buyers
seek bargains
7%
Free extra year of maintenance
5%
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
5%
11%
50%+
5%
Kato: New
approaches to
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PROTECT
selecting a primary storage system, but another important consideration is data protection. But data protection
is no longer the sole domain of the backup process.
Modern primary storage systems can go a long way
to protecting themselves with built-in data protection
systems that potentially replace backup or at least lighten
its load. For IT professionals, the key is to understand the
capabilities of these features and decide just how much of
the backup load they would like primary storage to carry.
Built-in data
protection for
primary storage
Snapshots, mirroring, replication and erasure
coding can all help keep data safelearn how
and when to use them.
BY GEORGE CRUMP
LUCY2014/ISTOCK
HOME
STORAGE FEBRUARY 2016
36
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
A RAID Reader
For more information on the RAID alternatives
available in most storage systems:
READ: Uncover the right RAID recovery service
LISTEN: Examining RAID levels: RAID 0 through
RAID 6
DOWNLOAD: RAID level comparison chart: A free
download
READ: RAID types/levels and benefits explained
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
37
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
Snapshot technology has been available on storage systems for more than a decade but over the last few years,
it has become among the most valuable data protection
systems. First, most storage systems can track hundreds
of snapshots without any major impact on performance.
Second, most snapshot features within storage systems
have the ability to interface directly with applications such
as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server to capture a clean
copy of data while the snapshot is occurring. These two
advances mean that snapshots can be taken frequently and
stored for fairly long periods of time with the assurance
that the data they store is usable for recovery.
Snapshots are valuable when there is data corruption or
an accidental deletion. In those cases, the snapshot can be
mounted and data copied back to the production volume,
or the snapshot can simply replace the existing volume.
In both scenarios, data loss is minimal and time to recover
is almost instant.
38
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
39
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Primary storage can better protect itself from data failures than ever before, but those internal data protection
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
40
HOT SPOTS
JASON BUFFINGTON
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Disk, tape, or
cloud? Or, all
of the above?
Mix and match data protection media
to better meet your companys needs.
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
going on about data protection methods right now, and it centers on disk, tape or cloud. Of
course, cloud is a delivery mechanism, not a medium, and
cloud providers are using disk and near-line tape, too.
But what kinds of media and architectures are organizations really using for backup? According to ESG
research, the most common approach continues to be
disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T). In other words, backing
up from primary disk; then leveraging secondary disk for
efficient deduplication and fast, granular recovery; and
finally employing tertiary tape for long-term retention.
Twenty-six percent of the organizations surveyed by ESG
said they use this data protection method.
Another 16% go a different route: disk-to-disk-to-cloud
(D2D2C). They make sure theyll have rapid/granular
recovery if needed via the secondary disk, and they send
THERES A DEBATE
41
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
However,
tape and 20% are using the cloud in some fashion for
data protection.
n
Twenty-three
JASON BUFFINGTON
About us
42
READ/WRITE
JEFF KATO
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
New approaches
to building
scale-out NAS
New design techniques are ushering
in new scale-out NAS systems that rival
object storage.
LIFE WAS MUCH easier in the 90s. We had block storage and
file storage, and each had their place: block for highly
transactional data and file for unstructured and departmental storage.
By the end of the 90s, network-attached storage (NAS)
design improved performance enough to make it suitable
for running Oracle databases. Administrators preferred
easy-to-manage file storage to complex block storage with
dedicated Fibre Channel SAN switches.
But with the turn of the century, new technologies
for storage devices and architectures multiplied. Unified
storage emerged, combining block and file storage. First
generation multi-node scale-out NAS also emerged,
improving scalability but compromising small file performance. When scale-out NAS design couldnt keep
Flash-first design.
43
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
use NAS for big data because it doesnt scale. Until now,
they were right. Traditional scale-out NAS becomes
bogged down at hundreds of millions of files, which leans
toward workloads of very large files and leaves high-performance NAS to NetApp and EMC. With flash-first
design and enhanced metadata techniques, modern scaleout NAS should be able to scale to tens of billions of files (a
>100X improvement) with uncompromised performance
for both large and small files.
n
Software-defined design.
44
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
About us
45
Home
Castagna:
Storage predictions,
real and surreal
Toigo: Defining
software-defined
storage
2015 Products
of the Year
Backup shoppers
back big names
Hyper-converged
systems prove
more than hype
Backup buyers
seek bargains
Primary data
protection primer
Buffington: Mix
media for better
data protection
Kato: New
approaches to
scale-out NAS
STORAGE MAGAZINE
VP EDITORIAL Rich Castagna
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