Software-defined storage

by Michael Letschin, Director of Product Management, Solutions, Nexenta

Everything in culture has a way of repeating itself, it happens in every arena of our life.  In fashion we look at items as vintage, whether it is from the 70s or the roarin’ 20s.  In music, artist like Justin Timberlake harken back to the days of early Michael Jackson and we have some artists today that people view like the modern day Rat Pack of Sinatra’s era.  Technology is no different, and as we move into 2015, life is in fact repeating itself.  I have spent nearly 20 years in technology, starting with working on mainframes and green screen clients, then came the shift to the x86 server. Over the past few years we have seen virtual servers become mainstream, being us back to a centralized server setup and as virtual desktops gain traction we move towards thin clients and back to what I remember from growing up… simplicity and efficiency.

What have we learned from all this?  The importance of versatility, simplicity and efficiency… Over the past few years we have heard buzzwords that have driven the technology decisions but now that IT departments have finally shrunk to point where you can’t “do any more with less”, CIOs have the choice of either outsourcing all their products or going with something that makes it easier on the staff they have.  The efficiency comes from not only simplicity but also on an economic front, you pay for a service like you would electricity.  During 2014 we talked of Software-Defined Data Centers but I have yet to see any single enterprise truly adopt the notion that hardware is not the answer.  Deploying hardware in the traditional sense is starting to move to the wayside, with the software controlling the hardware, the “bent metal” is not the treasure.  Add in the idea that an enterprise can have freedom to deploy their choice of hardware and remove the proprietary upgrades and process of the past and we move towards the software defined future.

2015 will begin with more and more enterprises adopting the idea that hardware independence means that their staff can be more efficient by concentrating on the software and letting the hardware vendors spend their time competing for their business.  The rise of DevOps will continue to make datacenters simpler and more automated.  Projects like OpenCompute can finally gain traction in the enterprise as hardware is bought as simply a platform regardless if the need is for servers, storage or networking.  Software-Defined Storage will continue to grow in the enterprise as IT staff see that they no longer can support the complexity of forklift migrations just to get some more speed.  Software-Defined Networking has been lagging in the past year or so but the efficiency need will surely allow networking teams to built the global enterprise.

We used to say that no one got fired for buying IBM, well now IBM is services and buying from all the cloud based services.  What goes around comes around and the giants in the IT industry may just end up being the users and admins in 2015, not the hardware vendors of the last decade.

Allison Darin, Director of Communications & Public Relations, Nexenta Systems, Inc.

Big Data and Software-Defined Storage go hand in hand as part of the NexentaStor implementation for EngineRoom.io. EngineRoom.io – the world’s leading Secure Private Cloud Service for the entire Big Data Pipeline – are market leaders in the innovative area of “high performance data analysis ” (HPDA) for industries from media and entertainment, life sciences, financial services, oil & gas, engineering and more.

They recently added Software-Defined Storage to their IT toolkit through their deployment of NexentaStor and other leading Software-Defined Data Center solution providers including Brocade, SanDisk (FusionIO) and VMware. Take a look at our new case study here for lots more information.

Allison Darin, Director of Communications & Public Relations, Nexenta Systems, Inc.

First, the good news. We are in a year that promises to shake up the storage world with open source Software-Defined Storage (SDS) solutions revolutionizing the market and helping today’s organizations build toward the Software Defined Enterprise (SDE) of the future.

Even better, the SDS revolution, spearheaded by Nexenta, is spreading to more and more vertical markets and countries. And while the institutions and organizations adopting an SDS approach have made their choice for a number of reasons, they all have one thing in common: they’re very happy with what it delivers. But don’t take our word for it – read on for the stories of several customers and their journey towards becoming Software Defined.

In Germany, regional energy supplier Stadtwerke Tuttlingen (SWT) provides electricity, gas, and water utilities to over 34,200 residents across 980 square miles in the South West area of the country.

SWT’s existing storage solution was proving inadequate to run multiple high performance databases (Oracle, MSSQL) and incapable of supporting a planned VDI deployment. Searching for a storage system that offered high performance, flexibility and high availability, SWT found NexentaStor.

One of the key selling points for SWT was the simplicity of Nexenta’s products. There was no need for complex licensing and NexentaStor provided features such as unlimited snapshots, thin provisioning and hybrid storage pooling that helped SWT to implement cost-effective storage with high performance.

In the UK, the University of Sussex turned to Nexenta when its original solution started to approach end of life. The IT department at the University provides support to the entire university – 13,000 students and over 2,100 staff – with a single home directory service that enables users to access files from whatever device and operating system they are using, wherever they are on the campus.

NexentaStor was selected because of its flexibility, scalability and attractive economics. It delivered the performance the University sought, and paved the way for sustainable expansion. The stability, scalability and performance of Nexenta has proven so effective that it has prompted the IT department to look at other campus storage systems and further opportunities to consolidate, increase speed and grow efficiently.

In the media industry, London-based boutique VFX organization BlueBolt was searching for an adaptive storage solution to manage the growing workload of its creative and technical staff and to keep up with the evolving demands of the industry.

BlueBolt has provided the visual effects for many award-winning productions including the BBC’s Great Expectations, Game of Thrones (Season 1) and Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom. Needing to implement a secure, reliable, scalable storage solution, the company chose Nexenta’s SDS solution to centralize and manage its storage infrastructure and replace the various storage platforms in situ.

Best of all, Nexenta provided all of the features BlueBolt expected from an enterprise storage platform while remaining one of the most cost-effective solutions on the market.

There are many advantages for organizations like SWT, University of Sussex and BlueBolt that opt for Nexenta’s SDS approach. They escape from vendor lock-in, total cost of ownership (TCO) is radically improved, performance gets significantly better and the result is true scalability. In other words, it’s future-proof.

Nexenta helps customers to bypass the MESS (Massively Expensive Storage Systems) produced by traditional vendors and concentrate on growing and building their business – boosting productivity and customer service. It’s a win win for everybody.

No wonder customers in industries as diverse as media (BlueBolt), energy supply (SWT) and education (the University of Sussex) are turning to Nexenta, the global leader in SDS, to deliver easy to use, secure and ultra low cost storage software solutions.

By now, some of you are probably starting to ask: That’s great, but what happened to the bad news? Good news everybody, there isn’t any.