Software-defined storage

File Services for HCI and Block Storage Simplified

July 17, 2018 By mletschin

Check out our video “Deploying NexentaStor as a Virtual Storage Appliance“.

Today’s modern datacenter has a combination of compute, storage and networking options. This includes an ever-growing use of hyperconverged and block only storage systems. These systems are great for running virtual machines, but users and applications still require file services to conduct daily business. Deploying a file services solution for NFS or SMB connections can be a labor intensive and expensive proposition; to combat that, Nexenta provides a quick and easy way for administrators to add file services to their existing virtual infrastructure. One of the many deployment models of the NexentaStor solution is as a virtual storage appliance (VSA). To make this even simpler and faster for our end users, we have packaged NexentaStor as an OVF appliance. The NexentaStor OVF is installed directly from a single URL for the OVF:

https://prodpkg.nexenta.com/nstor/5.2.1.8/addons/NexentaStorVSA.ovf

“NAS-up” Your Hyper-converged Infrastructure or SAN with NexentaStor (and get hybrid cloud, too)

May 29, 2018 By Nexenta

By Michael Richtberg, Nexenta Advisory Board Member

It’s a great day when you get a deal on something you really need. Getting the most out of your existing IT infrastructure can really help you afford adding other business critical investments instead of duplicating something you already own. In the case of hyper-converged infrastructure or SAN block storage, you can increase the usefulness of these investments by adding full NAS capabilities without adding more hardware by using Nexenta’s leading storage software solution, NexentaStor.

Employee Perspective: A Multi-Protocol Solution

March 20, 2018 By sarahnexenta

After three and a half years at Nexenta, I joined another storage software company, an early stage start up. It was all very exciting and seemed like an amazing opportunity for me to share my software-defined storage skills and knowledge to help customers be successful and grow the company. Unfortunately, after four months I parted ways due to several factors.

At first, I was really impressed with the work the engineering team had done to build a software-defined storage (SDS) product with such intentionality. However, there were several factors that I began to question:

It’s still hard to convince customers to change from old habits to SDS.

Software Defined Storage isn’t the new buzz word it once was. Companies can find it a difficult paradigm to accept when it’s compared to appliance-based storage. Humans don’t like change, even if it’s a good kind of change. So it takes a lot of effort by a sales team to help bridge that gap of doubt. Customers want to see demo’s, proof of concepts (POCs), technical deep dives, customer references, the list goes on and on. And it’s all reasonable. When faced with something different and new, many customers want to be thorough to ensure that you’re making the right choice. Nexenta is the leader is SDS, with a 6000+ customers deployments that run their products. Any new customer can have the confidence that they aren’t the only person on the planet running SDS- and that they were in fact choosing the right solution as many enterprises are making the switch.

Employee Perspective: Software Defined Infrastructure and Hybrid Cloud Systems

March 14, 2018 By sarahnexenta

Companies consider cloud usage for enterprise IT infrastructure, yet the majority of data stays in its own organization. They have to decide what data and system should go public and private. Two big trends, Big Data and Cyber Security, do not allow them enough time to construct both systems in public and private separately. Data and security threats are increasing enormously in such short period, and will continue to do so. IT organization also needs to face the fact that they cannot have both an unlimited budget and time for the infrastructure to solve those issues. In this case, I believe Software Defined Infrastructure and Hybrid Cloud systems are the solution. It gives you the tremendous flexibility to adopt the system to public and private cloud based on the commodity hardware platform.

Employee Perspective: SDS – Bringing parity to the rest of the infrastructure stack

March 8, 2018 By sarahnexenta

When you purchase any OS today, it doesn’t come locked to specific hardware (sorry Apple). I can purchase Microsoft Office and it doesn’t care if I’m running it on a Dell PC, an Acer/Supermicro/HP. If you use applications like Salesforce you aren’t worried about the hardware. They are totally independent of the underlying hardware, and each is sized according to the job at hand. You buy hardware to fit your budget, on aesthetics, or its gaming performance (if you are my son). You buy software similarly and largely because it provides a function you need. So then why are so many people still buying storage hardware and software that are tied together?