Guard against "Cloud wash white": Understand the function of private cloud storage

When it comes to private cloud storage, it's often unclear where cloud computing starts, and where traditional centralized networked storage ends.

If you're not sure what the real storage cloud is, don't worry, there are a few vague notions about it. Even companies that have deployed to implement private storage cloud computing may not know the true definition of cloud computing.

"Some customers either like or hate the word cloud," says James Sangster, senior director of NetApp Solutions Marketing. "Some people would say, ' I'm not using cloud computing ', but according to the strict definition of cloud computing they're actually owning and using cloud computing. It's just that they don't call it a cloud. Others will say that they own the cloud, but it's strictly a collection of centralized storage. This has been going on for years. ”

Storage location is the primary factor in understanding the concept of private storage cloud computing. Private cloud storage can run in multiple locations, but it is generally dependent on the company's deployment. Many data storage administrators hope not only to gain the benefits of cloud computing but also to retain control of their enterprise data. "You create a public cloud structure, and the client will say, ' I am a public cloud, but I think this public cloud should be deployed within my enterprise," said Steve Zivanic, marketing vice President of Nirvanix Inc., which provides technology, infrastructure and functionality for the company's customers ' storage operations. "All customers must provide is a data center, power supply and cooling." We offer the rest. Everything is managed completely according to the service mode.

When it comes to cloud computing sessions, it may be easier to understand cloud computing as a technology for delivering services and virtualization. For many experts, there is also a list of key features that distinguish between private cloud computing storage and traditional storage configurations, as follows.

Object storage: object-based storage is the basic building block for storing cloud computing, because a real cloud computing product must handle operations that convert tens of billions of objects to hundreds of of petabytes of data. object-based Storage is the best technology for linear storage growth and implementation of flexible computing.

"I think the object," said David Vellante, founder and CEO of the analytics firm Wikibon. "A real cloud computing can scale to PB, tens of billions of objects. This is not possible with traditional disk drives (or file systems). ”

Although these numbers are climbing fast, not all applications support object-based storage. " Most applications support object storage, especially backup applications such as CommVault Simpana and Microsoft SharePoint, "Scality CEO Jerome Lecat said. "A few years ago, there were few applications. ”

Linear scalability: A private storage cloud must support linear scalability, which means there is no limit to the number of companies or users that can access it. "This is where confusion is most likely to occur," said Marc Staimer, president of Dragon Slayer consulting firm. "Traditional storage vendors will have storage limitations, that is, they have hardware limitations." ”

Still, the same companies, completely ignoring the limitations of their products, are renaming their products to make them a part of cloud computing, Staimer, who says such renaming campaigns are just a typical example of pseudo cloud computing.

Resources on demand: resources such as capacity are provided on demand in private storage cloud computing. Cloud computing can make it easy for users to automatically get more storage capacity, thus discarding the old method of previously notifying IT administrators of manually allocating resources. "This is the ability to dynamically acquire the resources of computing, storage, or network capacity by proposing demand," Wikibon's Vellante said. "The resources are right there, and all you need to do is ask and use it." In the past, when you needed resources, the IT department needed to call EMC and say, "Please deploy some hosts." ”

has storage location information: From the storage location, private cloud computing is very clear, that is, the system is very smart, it can be very clear where the data is stored in order to achieve efficient data access. This type of system with storage location information is a major feature of object-based storage. The system understands the storage location of the data and the location of the user, and the system can copy the data to the location where it is most likely to be accessed according to the pattern changes. "With the storage location information, the system will tell you ' this is the closest area you can get data, '" said Tony Asaro, founder and CEO of INI Group.

Billing and multi-tenant: For a private cloud, billing and multi-tenant are not mandatory, but in most cases they are extremely useful. In a traditional storage environment, billing systems are commonplace. In this mode, storage resource usage and transaction in each department are tracked, so IT administrators can monitor the location of a large amount of storage load.

NetApp's Sangster says many of his company's cloud computing clients have not yet used the billing system. "They are just ' monitoring ', that is, they are only aware of the Department's use of resources, and the company does not charge for it," he said. The difference between "billing" and "monitoring" is that the former is monetization based on the amount of storage resources used, while the latter is only described as a percentage of the amount of storage resources used.

When customers share an application or resource, they need to use the multi-tenant feature, and each customer's resources and data are not available to other customers in the cloud. Although this feature is a mandatory feature of the public cloud, it is not always necessary for private storage cloud computing. "Not every private cloud user will care about this," says Staimer of Dragon Slayer Consulting. Some people use the multi-tenant feature to restrict the use of data between departments, while others do not.

Technology Update and Data migration: The two key difference between private storage cloud computing and traditional storage facts is that cloud computing customers no longer need to deal with technology updates and data migrations. This is a boon to storage administrators because migrating from old systems to new systems is a heavy task that has been borne by cloud-computing storage vendors.

"You can get out of this," Staimer said. "Technology updates in cloud computing storage are not a problem at all. Add a new node and the data is automatically migrated. You can think of it as a tank. You can add another tank, which will strike a balance on its own. You never have to reboot the storage system, and you will never have to point the server back to the storage resource. ”

Nirvanx's Zivanic summarizes the differences between storage cloud computing and traditional storage deployments: "If you have to pay for maintenance or implement technology updates yourself, it's not cloud computing." ”