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Software-Defined Storage

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

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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.

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Efficient Replication using Multicast Protocols

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By Oscar Wahlberg, Director of Product Management

Replication as Data Protection

The use of replication as a data protection method is not new. Historically, it was relegated to disaster recovery for tier-1 applications and did not have a role in day-to-day backups.

Recently, however, many customers are using replication as their primary mechanism for backup and recovery for all tiers of systems – primarily due to the advent of object storage systems with built in replication and versioning. Unfortunately, the side effect is that this significantly increases the amount of data that needs to be replicated.

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Questions from the Field: Hyperconvergence

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By Michael Letschin, Field CTO

Having the most complete portfolio of Software-Defined Storage solutions in the industry is something that Nexenta pride’s itself on, but with that comes questions about all sorts of other storage technologies when I am out talking with our customers and partners.  Their questions range from trying to understand the latest trends like enterprise containers to the impact of the Internet of  Things and augmented reality, but more often than not their questions are about how some of the newer datacenter technologies will help their business.  These technologies range from Software-Defined Networking to public cloud and of course hyperconverged solutions.  Sometimes we integrate very well, for instance with the VMware vCloud Air where we can run inside the public cloud and be a DR target for our existing customers, at a public cloud price point.  In other environments we have to explain that many solutions are not one size fits all.  Hyperconverged falls into that camp and George Crump, an analyst for Storage Switzerland, has a great write-up here – Is Hyperconverged worth the Hype? – on the pros and cons to that market.  I think a key takeaway is that if you’re looking at a new project or a new datacenter with fixed needs, then the simplicity of hyperconverged could be the answer; but if you are growing a datacenter or expect unpredictable growth there are some caveats: the inability to separate storage and compute as you grow can result in over-buying, and losing the benefits you get from virtualization and consolidation.  In those cases, the idea of a traditionally isolated compute and storage solution has real benefit.  Utilizing new technologies like Software-Defined Storage to give you the flexibility of choosing the right hardware for you when you need it gets the enterprise closer and closer to the dream of a next generation or Software-Defined Datacenter.

For more on hyperconverged, check out Is Hyperconverged worth the Hype? by George Crump at Storage Swiss.

Why is Fibre Channel resurging?

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By Michael Letschin, Field CTO

There was a time when Fibre Channel was the only solution for those looking for a high speed transport. But that is not the case anymore. The predominant storage protocol in many virtualization environments is NFS, primarily because virtualization administrators know that administering file-based datastores is much easier than those based on LUNs. In addition, advances in NFS and combining NFS with flash storage make the system’s performance ideal for hosting virtualized workloads.

But Nexenta is seeing a resurgence in customers expressing an interest in using NexentaStor’s Fibre Channel option. This is particularly interesting because, unlike other platforms, NexentaStor does not lock you into a particular protocol. Customers are free to choose NFS, SMB, Fibre Channel, or iSCSI. This means the only reason they would be using Fibre Channel is that it offers something that the other alternatives don’t – performance.

Performance is the main historical reason IT professionals prefer Fibre Channel over Ethernet; however, some may read that statement and disagree. Ethernet offers 40 Gb and Fibre Channel is only 16 Gb. If Ethernet has more bandwidth, how could Fibre Channel have better performance? The answer is bandwidth is not the primary performance consideration for some applications. If an application is looking for low latency, Fibre Channel will win over Ethernet almost every time. A look at the design of the two protocols will explain why.

Fibre Channel design assumes very short connections that are never longer than a Kilometer and usually much shorter. In contrast, Ethernet networks can stretch around the world. Due to this design difference, Fibre Channel can assume that all frames make it to the other side, where Ethernet assumes that many of them will not make it. This means Fibre Channel doesn’t have to do as much error checking and re-transmitting as Ethernet does. This translates into significantly lower latency numbers.

Another low latency device that is quite popular is Flash. Fibre Channel offers a better latency match to Flash than Ethernet does. Perhaps one has to look no further to see the reason behind this resurgence in Fibre Channel. If a customer has a latency-sensitive application, they are going to consider Flash as their storage medium. And if they are going to use Flash, they will want a low-latency protocol to communicate with their storage – and Fibre Channel meets the bill.

Whatever the reason for this particular resurgence in Fibre Channel, Nexenta’s solution allows customers to take advantage of whatever storage protocols they think are appropriate for their environment. And if they change their mind at a later date, they can start using a different protocol without changing their storage product. This is the flexibility of an open storage product like NexentaStor.

For additional information, read up on NexentaStor.