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Software-Defined Storage

Congratulations to EMC!

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Congratulations to EMC and their software teams for announcing ViPR. Since we have been selling software defined storage for a number of years – and now have many more times customers than Vmware did when EMC bought them (and more than 10x than 3PAR when they went public for example) – I take exception to the lead in the press release proclaiming ViPR as “the world’s first Software Defined Storage platform…”

Nonetheless, ViPR appears to be a real step forward towards software defined storage. And EMC deserves a lot of credit for again showing a willingness to risk aspects of their core business in order to keep up with customer requirements.

If you are one of the folks to read this blog regularly, you know we have shared a simple definition of SDS. You can read more about it here. Our definition is based on countless discussions with our cloud and enterprise customers who have shared with us why they started down the journey to software defined storage in the first place.

Basically it is 1) Abstract away the underlying hardware. 2) Achieve flexibility through the ability to handle multiple data access methods and data types. 3) Be truly software defined – through an architecture and set of APIs that allows, for example, orchestration software to manage the storage and to determine to what extent it is meeting application requirements.

If you look at what we know about ViPR – I think it is software that is policy driven that delivers object storage and that also manages and possibly virtualizes block and file storage. I gathered this especially from the more detailed write up over onEFYTimes.

It’s difficult to glean much from a press storm and I know that things will be much clearer once we see more detail from EMC and customers but let’s look at early indications of how ViPR might shape up based on those criteria.

  1. Abstraction
      • ViPR: ViPR does not, it appears, add a consistent set of storage management capabilities over any hardware – it exposes and manages those that are already available on the hardware. If you are on an array with snapshots – congratulations, you’ve got (some sort of) snap shots. On the other hand if you are on a JBOD, no luck. Additionally, of course, ViPR does not open up the on disk format as it is generally not in the data path. This means vendor lock–in remains and arguably increases as ViPR hooks into your Vmware environment.
      • NexentaStor: Conversely NexentaStor runs on any hardware, including high performance SSDs to deliver caching, and of course JBODs and does deliver that consistent set of capabilities irrespective of the underlying hardware. But – NexentaStor really prefers JBODs to legacy storage arrays and it is extremely likely that ViPR will be better able to manage heterogenous storage arrays, especially those from EMC, than NexentaStor does; NexentaStor can virtualize them but is not aware of their underlying capabilities in a way that ViPR will be.
  2. Achieve flexibility. The basic difference is that NexentaStor is broader and more flexible that we think ViPR will be when it ships thanks, again, to controlling everything from the on disk format to the access methods. On the other hand, while Nexenta has sponsored open source object approaches we are not shipping today a object storage solution whereas ViPR will include object. Whether we will ship object by the time ViPR ships is yet to be seen.
      • A lot depends on to what extent ViPR can actually virtualize the underlying resources by combining them into pools that include SSDs; NexentaStor has this ability today which is why we have partners shipping JBODs with cache achieving 1 million IOPS and more. On the other hand, the promised capability of ViPR to turn object into file and vise–versa could be important.
      • I am hopeful that in this area ViPR will be a massive step forward vs. legacy arrays which are essentially black-holes for your data, each requiring a different set of expertise to manage and built to address a different silo of data.
      • What needs to be seen is how ViPR will handle putting the right data on the right underlying array. Whereas with NexentaStor the configurations themselves, such as the block sizes used to write the data disk, are themselves variable in the case of ViPR the software has make sure that, for example, video files needed for streaming are stored on underlying Isilon arrays whereas structured data like Oracle remains on VNX and presumably high random I/O workloads from larger cloud and Vmware deployments are served from XtremeIO.
  3. Being software defined this is arguably the most vague section of our fairly vague definition of software defined storage.Today, however, IF ViPR is routing data sets based on application requirements to the right underlying array – per the point above – than it may well have the architecture necessary to close the application management loop. By comparison, NexentaStor can absolutely eliminate the need for deep storage engineering with solutions like VSA for VDI. In this solution the customer must simply enter the number and type of desktops and NexentaStor – with integration code for VDI – does the rest AND, crucially, tests and manages the system to insure that the requirements are being met.
      • Nexenta, however, built the VSA for VDI business logic in part in hopes of seeing others in the industry run with the task. Arguably orchestration solutions like aspects of OpenStack and CloudStack and even VMTurbo should pick up the baton if they are truly going to be the brain inside the software defined data center. It may be that EMC with ViPR and of course Vmware will lead the industry in creating an open approach to characterizing application requirements and using them to simplify management.
      • Please note – plaintive request – what the storage layer really needs is something like the recently announced Project Daylight from IBM, Cisco, Juniper and of course the Linux Foundation. I think even Nicra / Vmware / EMC is joining that effort to open up the control layer. Read more about Project Daylight here
      • In the meantime, Nexenta’s upcoming Metis utility – which ties application logic to details like pool configurations – is growing in value and importance with integration into our and our partner’s Salesforce for example and ServiceNow and other management solutions in the future. However, again, Nexenta cannot be the business logic of a software defined data center on our own. The industry needs to come together here and maybe ViPR will be a catalyst to make that happen.

A Few Observations From OpenStorage Summit About SDS

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OSS EMEA 2013 was one of the more inspiring few days I’ve experienced recently at Nexenta.  It was not a marketing event.  It was war stories about the shift to OpenStorage and Software Defined Storage shared in sessions, over demos, and, yes, over beers.

A few things I learned included:

  • SDS is already real and leverages commodity hardware.  I had the opportunity to facilitate a cloud panel where I learned that the top hosting and cloud companies in Northern Europe are using NexentaStor as software defined storage – right now.  SDS is not done – we are furiously adding capabilities as is the broader community.  More below on that subject.  But – Schuberg Phils presented on how they manage NexentaStor via Chef and use it as the basis of their cloud infrastructure TODAY.  And how the use of commodity hardware means cost savings now and in the future and also – greater flexibility and supportability.  Schuberg Phils is rapidly moving towards an infrastructure comprised almost entirely of commodity hardware and software, including their use of CloudStack, KVM, Arista, Nicira, and open approaches to security and load balancing as well.
  • SDS is about to take the next step.  While approximately 190 customers and partners attended OSS and discussed in part their usage of NexentaStor as a version of software defined storage – the booths attracting the most attention were those showing forthcoming Nexenta capabilities that add infinite scalability of the management framework through further separating the control and the management frameworks as well as those that map application requirements to storage software and hardware configurations.
  • SDS isn’t just about deep and cheap.  While many larger enterprises use NexentaStor initially as second and third tier storage to save money – over time customers often use NexentaStor for the flexibility of the solution and for the ability of NexentaStor to perform when used as hybrid flash or or all flash storage.  Marik Lubinski, LeaseWeb’s Virtualization and Storage Engineer, reported that as one of the largest hosting companies in Europe, with operations extending to the United States, they have used just about every legacy storage solution available on the market today.  And he reported that, by far, NexentaStor is “the fastest storage by far, of any storage we run.”

SDS and its foundation, OpenStorage, are not just about marketing.  Despite many blogs and statements from legacy vendors arguing either that they already have SDS or that they soon will have SDS, the simple fact is that they have neither the open approach and software only business model needed OR – as last week reminded me – the people, the community and the sheer number of progressive users that OpenStorage based SDS has accumulated.  Together we are making a reality a fundamentally better approach to enterprise class storage.