Storage for a Multi-cloud World

Just about every organization is evaluating or using cloud in some fashion. When you look at various enterprises, there’s a wide range of deployment options to consider, but one thing is certain: as cloud spend continues to increase, some form of multi-cloud will be part of most enterprise cloud strategies, so it’s essential to have the right storage infrastructure in place to support multi-cloud.

 

 

Henry Chu, Director of Solution Management, Cloudian

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Storage for a Multi-cloud World

Just about every organization is evaluating or using cloud in some fashion. When you look at various enterprises, there’s a wide range of deployment options to consider: on-premises private cloud, hybrid using on-premises private cloud and public cloud, colo-services, or a mix of various public clouds. But one thing is certain, that as cloud spend continues to increase, some form of multi-cloud will be part of most enterprise cloud strategies, so it’s essential to have the right storage infrastructure in place to support multi-cloud.

 

Multi-Cloud Obstacles

What are some of the obstacles of doing multi-cloud? There are quite a lot, but let’s focus on a specific area. Data storage — specifically, object storage offerings across the clouds, as it provides the vast majority of capacity needs for multi-cloud environments. If you don’t have the right object storage solution, it can present significant challenges.

Most customers and cloud applications look for S3 compatibility as it is fast becoming the de facto standard for cloud storage. However, not every provider has an S3 service, and even if a provider does have one, the S3 APIs often are not the same or do not have the same compatibility, depending on where they’re deployed. As a result, APIs and UX differences can impact an organization’s processes and applications.

For example, API and UX differences among S3-compatible storage systems might require that applications and tools in a DevOps environment be changed or rewritten. This can lead to increased development and operational costs, such as those involving code changes to apps or admins having to change their tools to make things work with these incompatible services or APIs.

Managing multi-clouds can be another challenge. Because each provider has its own APIs and tools to manage cloud resources, this raises the question of how you manage a service across multiple clouds.

Finally, there’s the cost of operating across multiple clouds. Some providers impose additional egress charges for moving data out of their cloud, which can make certain operations cost prohibitive. Also, some storage platforms’ methods of providing data replication or availability across multiple clouds can generate additional egress charges.

Cloudian’s Multi-cloud S3-compatible Storage

Going to a multi-cloud deployment provides some inherent benefits:

  • Data locality: Ability to distribute the data closer to the application, where it’s needed.
  • Data Availability: Ability to protect your enterprise data by leveraging the hyperscalers as a second location, or use one hyperscaler with another hyperscaler as a DR site.
  • Cost benefits: Path to reduce TCO by leveraging cost advantages of different clouds.

With Cloudian HyperStore, the benefits are further enhanced. HyperStore provides a cloud-agnostic S3 object storage. Same S3 service, with unified management and access across any cloud deployments. Because it’s fully S3-compatible object storage, HyperStore can also be deployed on-prem and across any/all the major hyperscalers (AWS, Google, Azure).

With Hyperstore, you can have a single namespace and same S3-compatible service across all clouds, giving you the same S3 APIs and UX. It’s worth pointing out that Hyperstore has the most compatible S3 APIs compared with AWS S3. The S3 API is part of HyperStore’s core design, resulting in the highest levels of compatibility. And because S3 is the de facto standard for cloud storage, most — if not all — cloud applications will likely be compatible with HyperStore out of the box.

With HyperStore object storage in a multi-cloud deployment, you can enable cloud services such as Backup-as-a-Service, Archive-as-a-Service and Storage-as-a-Service as well as deploy data lakehouse solutions leveraging data locality from different cloud providers. In addition, HyperStore has the industry-leading S3 Object Lock implementation for data immutability — protecting data across any/all clouds from ransomware.

Broader Benefits of Cloudian HyperStore

With HyperStore, you get a simple but flexible configuration across all clouds.

As mentioned above, HyperStore provides a single namespace across all types of clouds, from on-prem private clouds to hyperscalers, and a single common management interface.  And with Cloudian’s HyperIQ, you get single-view-monitoring and analytics.

HyperStore can be deployed in a single region or multi-region configuration, and with multi-region, there’s the option of cross-region replication.

In terms of scale, HyperStore users can start small with just 3 nodes and scale up to an exabyte without interruption

S3 endpoint is flexible in that it can go to a single region, multi-region or even down to a specific data center (DC). Cloudian can also distribute S3 requests to a specific DC or across different regions with its HyperBalance load balancer.

The regions can be comprised of on-prem, AWS, Google, Azure, or any combination.

Cloudian has a wide range of storage policies that are configurable on a per S3 bucket basis. Storage policies define the protection for a bucket, using replication factor or erasure coding. The objects can then be distributed to different DCs or be kept at a single DC.

Additionally, the way HyperStore handles distribution of data across DCs defined by storage policies minimizes egress when writing object data into a HyperStore cluster. HyperStore distributes the PUT requests among each individual node that resides on each public cloud.  This provides a more efficient way to replicate data across multiple clouds by using more ingress and minimizing egress. In contrast, a store-and-forward method to replicate data across multiple clouds would use not only ingress but egress for the data that is being replicated, incurring additional egress charges.

As mentioned above, in a multi-region configuration, Cloudian can replicate across the regions with cross-region replication. This means remote sites can be used for DR or data backup and restore at any point in time.

Finally, HyperStore can tier to remote public clouds like AWS, GCP, or Azure even if the remote site does not have HyperStore, providing the option to move metadata and data to public clouds and have bimodal access.

In summary, for any enterprises that are adopting any form of multi-cloud — whether it be on-prem private cloud, hybrid, or any mix of public clouds — Cloudian HyperStore provides the common S3 service in a single namespace across all clouds. With the highest S3 API compatibility, it helps ensure application compatibility with S3 is maintained.

We will be diving further into HyperStore compatibility and other multi-cloud topics in future blogs. In the meantime, see our multi-cloud demos to learn more about the benefits of deploying Cloudian for these environments.

How to Get Full GitHub Benefits On-Premises

GitHub has traditionally been known as a commonly used cloud service to store, manage and share code using tools like Git. It is this service that’s most familiar to many developers. However, GitHub also has an offering that provides the ability to use GitHub on-premises with GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) for enterprises that require a solution behind their firewall due to network restrictions or generally want tighter control over their data and access to it.

 

Henry Chu, Director of Solution Management, Cloudian

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How to Get Full GitHub Benefits On-Premises

GitHub has traditionally been known as a commonly used cloud service to store, manage and share code using tools like Git. It is this service that’s most familiar to many developers. However, GitHub also has an offering that provides the ability to use GitHub on-premises with GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) for enterprises that require a solution behind their firewall due to network restrictions or generally want tighter control over their data and access to it. GHES includes GitHub Actions and GitHub Packages, both of which can use not only public cloud storage but also on-prem S3-compatible object storage, which is what’s needed for a complete on-prem deployment of GHES. Cloudian HyperStore provides a validated on-prem object storage for GHES with the highest levels of S3 compatibility. In addition, HyperStore can also be deployed across multiple public clouds, providing a distributed S3 service for GHES with a single namespace across multi-cloud infrastructure.

This blog focuses on how to deploy HyperStore with GitHub Actions and GitHub Packages on-prem.

GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions automates CI/CD workflows and are created from building, testing, pull, and deploying requests. Cloudian HyperStore provides the on-prem S3-compataible object storage for GitHub Actions to store data such as artifacts and logs.

Cloudian has validated the necessary S3 operations used by GitHub Actions with HyperStore (see Cloudian’s validation at GHES Storage Partners). Using GitHub’s ghe-storage-test.sh, all storage operations have passed.

To configure GitHub Actions with Cloudian HyperStore, go to GHES Site admin interface.

On Site admin, go to Management console.

At the Management console, go to Applications and Enable GitHub Actions. Under Artifact & Log Storage, choose Amazon S3.

Enter the following fields:

  • AWS Service URL: Enter the S3 endpoint configured for your HyperStore Cluster.
  • AWS S3 Bucket: Enter the name of the bucket to be used for GitHub Actions
  • AWS S3 Access Key: Enter the access key for the HyperStore user for the given bucket
  • AWS S3 Secret Key: Enter the secret key for the HyperStore user for the given bucket

Click on Test storage settings to validate the configuration. Then save the settings.

GitHub Packages

GitHub Packages gives you a safe way to publish and share application packages within your organization. With Cloudian HyperStore, you can achieve a complete on-prem deployment.

To configure GitHub Packages with HyperStore, go to Management console and then to Packages. Enable GitHub Packages.

Choose Amazon S3 for your storage.  Enter the following fields:

  • AWS Service URL: Enter the S3 endpoint configured for your HyperStore Cluster.
  • AWS S3 Bucket: Enter the name of the bucket to be used for GitHub Packages.
  • AWS S3 Access Key: Enter the access key for the HyperStore user for the given bucket
  • AWS S3 Secret Key: Enter the secret key for the HyperStore user for the given bucket

Click on Test storage settings to validate the configuration and then save the settings.

Summary

With GitHub Enterprise Server and Cloudian HyperStore, enterprises now have a solution to store, manage, and share code with full control behind the security of their firewall. HyperStore provides the S3-compatible object storage on-prem (or distributed over multi-cloud) for GitHub Actions, a solution for CI/CD workflows. Similarly, HyperStore can also be used as a storage target for GitHub Packages, a repository for application packages.

To learn more about HyperStore’s features and benefits, go to Scalable Enterprise Object Storage | Cloudian HyperStore.

Meeting Hybrid Cloud Demands: Microsoft AzureStack HCI and Cloudian HyperStore

Microsoft and Cloudian enable organizations to leverage the benefits of public cloud while keeping some infrastructure, applications and data on-premises, behind the firewall and fully under the organization’s control.

 

Steve Connors, Senior Alliances Manager, Cloudian

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Meeting Hybrid Cloud Demands: Microsoft AzureStack HCI and Cloudian HyperStore

Over the last two years, hybrid cloud has become the dominant IT deployment model, with 82% of IT leaders saying they’ve adopted it in a Cisco report earlier this year.[1] It enables organizations to leverage the benefits of public cloud while keeping some infrastructure, applications and data on-premises, behind the firewall and fully under the organization’s control. Reflecting the increasing adoption of hybrid cloud, global hyperscalers have introduced new services to meet the demand and ensure a seamless experience across public and private clouds. Here we take a look at the Microsoft AzureStack HCI service and how Cloudian’s HyperStore object storage works with the service.

According to Microsoft, “AzureStack HCI is a hyperconverged infrastructure host platform integrated with Azure. Run Windows and Linux virtual machines on-premises with existing IT skills and familiar tools. Delivered as an Azure subscription service, Azure Stack HCI is always up-to-date and can be installed on your choice of server hardware.”

Cloudian HyperStore, a leading scale-out storage system, has been validated to work with Azure Stack HCI, enabling customers to store and protect large amounts of unstructured data on prem and use the Azure public cloud for real-time, on-demand computing power, which is more cost effective than buying additional hardware.

HyperStore employs policy-based tools to replicate or tier data to Azure for offsite disaster recovery, capacity expansion or data analysis in the cloud. HyperStore offers limitless scalability, multi-tenancy and military-grade security. This includes the ability to isolate storage pools using local and remote authentication methods such as Password, AD, LDAP, IAM and certificate-based authentication.

Deploying Cloudian HyperStore on Azure Stack HCI provides the following key benefits:

  • Turnkey HCI solution – network, compute, storage and virtualization
  • Hybrid cloud readiness – seamless movement of data across on-prem and public cloud environments
  • Unified view of data – a single namespace across multiple locations
  • Reduced operational costs – savings on data egress and bandwidth charges

To learn more about the Cloudian HyperStore-Azure Stack HCI hybrid cloud solution, go to cloudian.com/microsoft/#azure.

[1] Report: 82% of IT leaders are adopting the hybrid cloud, Tech Republic, May 25, 2022

Fight Kubernetes Ransomware with Kasten and Cloudian

Adam BerghAdam Bergh
Cloud Native Technical Partnerships at Kasten by Veeam
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amit rawlani

Amit Rawlani
Director Technology Alliances, Product & Solution Marketing, Cloudian Inc.

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The threat of ransomware should be thought of as serious problem for all enterprises. According to an annual report on global cyber security, there were 304 million ransomware attacks worldwide in 2020 — a 62% increase from 2019. While most IT organizations are aware of the continuously rising threat of ransomware on traditional applications and infrastructure, modern applications running on Kubernetes are also at risk. The rapid rise of critical applications and data moving into Kubernetes clusters has caught the attention of those seeking to exploit what is perceived to be a new and emerging space. This can leave many organizations ill prepared to fight back.

Kubernetes Vulnerabilities

Kubernetes itself and many of the most common applications that run in Kubernetes are open-source products. Open-source means that the underly code that makes up the applications is freely available for any to review and find potential vulnerabilities. While not overly common, open-source products can often lead to exploitable bugs being discovered by malicious actors. In addition, misconfigured access controls can unintentionally lead to unauthorized access to applications or even the entire cluster. Kubernetes is updated quarterly, and some applications as often as every week, so it’s crucial for organizations to stay up to date with patching.

Surprisingly, many organizations that use Kubernetes don’t yet have a backup and recovery solution in place — which is a last line of defense against an attack. As ransomware becomes more sophisticated, clusters and applications are at risk of being destroyed, and without a means to restore them, you could suffer devastating data and application loss in the case of an attack.

What to Look for In a Kubernetes Ransomware Protection Platform

When looking to an effective defense against ransomware in your K8s environment, think about these four core capabilities:

  1. Backup integrity and immutability: Since backup is your last line of defense, it’s important that your backup solution is reliable, and it’s critical to be confident that your backup target storage locations contain the information you need to recover applications in case of an attack. Having guaranteed immutability of your backup data is a must.
  2. High-performance recovery: No one wants to pay a ransom because it was faster to unencrypt your data than recover it from your backup system. The ability to work quickly to recover resources is critical, as the cost of ransom typically increases over time. Being confident that your recovery performance can meet target requirements even as the amount of data grows over time.
  3. Operational Simplicity: Operations teams must work at scale across multiple clusters in hybrid environments that span cloud and on-premises locations. When you’re working in a high-pressure environment following a ransomware attack, simplicity of operations become paramount.

Cloudian and Kasten by Veeam Have the Solution

Kasten By Veeam and Cloudian have teamed to bring a truly cloud native approach to this mission critical problem. The Kasten K10 data management software platform has been purpose-built for Kubernetes. K10’s deep integrations with Kubernetes distributions and cloud storage systems provide for protection and mobility of your entire Kubernetes application. Cloudian’s HyperStore is an enterprise-grade S3-compatible object storage platform running in your data center. Cloudian makes it easy to use private cloud storage to protect your Kubernetes applications with a verified integration with Kasten. With native support of the cloud standard S3 API, including S3 Object Lock data immutability, Kasten and Cloudian offer seamless protection for modern applications at up to 70% less cost than public cloud.

Kasten Cloudian blog diagram 1

Fast recovery: Cloudian provides a local, disk-based object storage target for backing up modern apps using Kasten K10 over your local, high-speed network. The solution lets you backup and restore large data sets in a fraction of the time required for public cloud storage, leading to enhanced Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).

Security and Ransomware Protection

Cloudian is a hardened object storage system that includes enhanced security features such as secure shell, encryption, integrated firewall and RBAC/IAM access controls to protect backup copies against malware. es in a shared-storage environment. In addition, to protect data from ransomware attacks, Cloudian HyperStore and Kasten support Object Lock for air-tight data immutability all the way up to the operating system root level.

Kasten-Validated Solution

Cloudian is Kasten-validated to ensure trouble-free integration. Kasten’s native support for the S3 API enables seamless integration with Cloudian HyperStore.

Easy as 1-2-3

Setting up Kasten K10 and Cloudian Ransomware Protection is as simple as 3 easy steps:

1. Create a new target bucket on Cloudian HyperStore and enable Object Lock.

Kasten Cloudian blog diagram 2

2. After Kasten K10 installation, check the “Enable Immutable Backups” box when adding a target S3 object storage bucket.

Kasten Cloudian blog diagram 3

3. Validate the Cloudian object storage bucket and specify your protection period.

Kasten Cloudian blog diagram 4

GET STARTED WITH KASTEN K10 TODAY!

An Introduction to Data Tiering

All data is not equal due to factors such as frequency of access, security needs, and cost considerations, therefore data storage architectures need to provide different storage tiers to address these varying requirements. Storage tiers differ depending on disk drive types, RAID configurations or even completely different storage sub-systems, which offer different IP profiles and cost impact.

Data tiering allows the movement of data between different storage tiers, which allows an organization to ensure that the appropriate data resides on the appropriate storage technology. In modern storage architectures, this data movement is invisible to the end-user application and is typically controlled and automated by storage policies. Typical data tiers may include:

  1. Flash storage – High value, high-performance requirements, usually smaller data sets and cost is less important compare to the performance Service Level Agreement (SLA) required
  2. Traditional SAN/NAS Storage arrays – Medium value, medium performance, medium cost sensitivity
  3. Object Storage – Less frequently accessed data with larger data sets. Cost is an important consideration
  4. Public Cloud –  Long-term archival for data that is never accessed

Typically, structured data sets belonging to applications/data sources such as OLTP databases, CRM, email systems and virtual machines will be stored on data tiers 1 and 2 as above. Unstructured data is more commonly moving to tiers 3 and 4 as these are typically much larger data sets where performance is not as critical and cost becomes a more significant factor in management and purchasing decisions.

Some Shortcomings of Data Tiering to Public Cloud

Public cloud services have become an attractive data tiering solution, especially for unstructured data, but there are considerations around public cloud use:

  1. Performance – Public network access will typically be a bottleneck when reading and writing data to public cloud platforms, along with data retrieval times (based on the SLA provided by the cloud service). Especially for backup data, backup and recovery windows are still incredibly important, so for the most relevant backup sets it is worth considering to hold onsite and only archive older backup data to the cloud.
  2. Security – Certain data sets/industries have regulations stipulating that data must not be stored in the cloud. Being able to control what data is sent to the cloud is of major importance.
  3. Access patterns – Data that is re-read frequently may incur additional network bandwidth costs imposed by the public cloud service provider. Understanding your use of data is vital to control the costs associated with data downloads.
  4. Cost – As well as bandwidth costs associated with reading data, storing large quantities of data in the cloud may not make the most economical sense, especially when compared to the economics of on-premise cloud storage. Evaluations should be made.

Using Hybrid Cloud for a Balanced Data Tier Strategy

For unstructured data, a hybrid approach to data management is key with an automation engine, data classification and granular control of data necessary requirements to really deliver on this premise.

With a hybrid cloud approach, you can push any data to the public cloud while also affording you the control that comes with on-premises storage. For any data storage system, granularity of control and management is extremely important as different data sets have different management requirements with the need to apply different SLAs as appropriate to the value of the data to an organization.

Cloudian HyperStore is a solution that gives you that flexibility for easily moving between data tiers 3 and 4 listed earlier in this post. Not only do you get the control and security from your data center, you can integrate HyperStore with many different destination cloud storage platforms, including Amazon S3/Glacier, Google Cloud Platform, and any other cloud service offering S3 API connectivity.

Learn more about our solutions today.

Learn more about NAS backup here.

 

Better Backup With the Software You Already Have

You know the challenges of the backup process. Veritas and Commvault are good products, but backup is still a chore. Your three choices for a backup target all have challenges: Tape is troublesome, disk is expensive, and backup to the cloud is slow.

How to save cost, reduce stress, and keep using the software you already know

The New Backup Target: Hybrid Cloud

You know the challenges of the backup process. Veritas and Commvault are good products, but backup is still a chore. Your three choices for a backup target all have challenges: Tape is troublesome, disk is expensive, and backup to the cloud is slow.

As an IT manager, you pick the best solution you can afford, but you’re often forced to make compromises along the way. Too often, the result is busted backup windows and unmet RTO and RPO SLAs, not to mention hours of wasted time and accumulated stress.

Now there’s a fourth backup target option:  Hybrid Cloud. (see Backup Solutions Note)

Hybrid cloud as a target gives you a faster, more reliable, lower cost process — free of capacity constraints. It works right now with the software you already know. And you can get started at zero upfront cost.

How the Hybrid Cloud Helps

Hybrid cloud integrates an on-premises disk-based target with a cloud-based target. Both the on-prem storage and cloud storage use the same interface and are managed as a single storage pool.

Their respective functions are:

  • On-prem target: Fast disk-backup. Provides predictable backup time; ensures immediate access for RTO/RPO SLAs
  • Public cloud target: DR repository; low-cost and offsite, it provides the ideal long-term archive, plus overflow capacity for limitless scalability

Works with Existing Backup Software

Backup procedures are proven through years of development. And you know well the software you have. The hybrid cloud approach leverages all of that investment and learning by preserving your existing processes.

To the backup software, the hybrid cloud appears exactly as cloud storage. (Connectors to Amazon S3 and other services are now available with most popular backup software.)

With hybrid cloud, that connector is simply directed at the on-prem storage. The on-prem storage then connects to the cloud. The two are managed as a single, limitlessly scalable storage pool.

The on prem S3-compatible storage is then directed at the S3 public cloud for data tiering purposes. The most recent backups — ie, the ones you’re most likely to use — are kept on prem. The older copies are migrated to the cloud.

The combined solution becomes a simple, drop-in replacement for existing backup target technologies. The result: on-site storage for fast access, and cloud storage for low-cost archive and DR.

In summary, hybrid combines a petabyte-scalable, high-performance on-premises backup target with seamless cloud storage integration. Together they let you retain a familiar workflow while ensuring success on the objectives that matter to you: backup window predictability, and repeatable RTO / RPO.

Start Small and Grow

Best of all, you can start with a small deployment, prove it out, and grow. On-prem S3 storage can be deployed on servers you already have, or deployed as preconfigured appliances.

There are even zero-upfront-cost options using Amazon metered-by-use software from the Amazon Marketplace.

Eight Ways Hybrid Cloud from Cloudian Makes Backup Better

Cloudian is the on-prem storage node in a hybrid storage configuration. It features the industry’s highest level of S3 compatibility, ensuring full interoperability with Veritas, Commvault, and Rubrik.

The Cloudian architecture is a scale-out storage cluster comprised of shared-nothing storage nodes. Your media servers connect to the on-prem Cloudian cluster via Ethernet and communicates via an S3-compatible API. Your backup software views the cluster exactly as it views cloud storage. It stores data to Cloudian exactly as it would to cloud storage.

The difference with Cloudian vs cloud alone is that all recent backups are stored locally for quick recovery when needed. Policy-based migration then allows older snapshots to be migrated to the public cloud. This frees up local capacity, and also provides an offsite copy for DR use.

Here are eight ways this helps:

1) Performance to handle the largest environments

Cloudian scales to petabytes with a scaling model that grows in both capacity and bandwidth. Predictable backup windows result from Cloudian’s high streaming bandwidth: Writes in excess of 5000 MB/s can be achieved, or 18TB per hour.

2) Petabyte-scalable

You can start small with just three nodes, and scale to petabytes simply by adding nodes. Scaling is seamless and does not require downtime.

3) 70% less cost than conventional disk

Built on industry-standard hardware, Cloudian drives down the cost of on-prem, disk-based storage to 1¢/GB/month or less, depending on capacity.

4) Manage one data pool

Cloudian maintains data in a single pool across all nodes. You get one-to-many auto-replication, enhancing data durability. No need to juggle what’s “active” or “passive,” create complex policies and snapshot management techniques, or track which sites are replicating to where.

5) Distributed architecture for global data protection

Enterprises struggle to manage backup at remote offices. With Cloudian, clustered nodes can be deployed globally and interconnected, thus allowing data to be automatically replicated across sites.  Because the nodes form a single namespace, you can implement policy-based data migration to the cloud for DR purposes. You get global data protection with fast local recovery, all managed from a single location.

6) Deploy as appliances, or on your own servers

Cloudian is built on industry-standard hardware. You have the flexibility to buy either pre-configured, fully supported appliances, or software for installation on the servers you choose. Either way, you benefit from the value of commodity hardware.

7) Drop-in integration

Cloudian can be immediately integrated with backup software packages that support cloud storage, including Veritas NetBackup, Veritas Backup Exec, Commvault Simpana and Rubrik. Cloudian is viewed exactly as cloud storage for both backup and recovery. For information that has been migrated to the cloud, Cloudian transparently retrieves that data and presents it to the media server.

8) Start small, even at zero upfront cost

Contact Cloudian to get started. We can even show you options that get you started at zero upfront cost, with Cloudian from the Amazon Marketplace.

For more information, read the Backup Solutions Note or specific data protection solutions with

Configuration Guides for Veritas and Commvault are also available.

  • Veritas
  • Commvault

Why Internet Unie Chose Cloudian for Hybrid Cloud Storage

Internet Unie, a service provider in the Netherlands, has recently deployed an innovative hybrid cloud service, combining Cloudian object storage in their data center together with Amazon S3 storage.

The new service allows their colocation customers to employ local S3 storage in their data center, with additional capacity available in the AWS public cloud.

Why would a service provider launch a service that employs another service provider (in this case Amazon)?

The answer is simple: it fills a real business need and gives Internet Unie a competitive advantage.

By offering their customers this hybrid service, Internet Unie meets multiple possible requirements:

    • Performance: Local storage provides cloud-compatible capacity without the latency of a long network hop
    • Data governance: Locally stored data does not leave the data center
    • Capacity flexibility: Data can be tiered off to the cloud when desired, meaning capacity is always there
    • Disaster recovery: Backup information can be moved off site at any time
    • Cost: Locally stored information costs nothing to access, meaning that cloud storage invoices become far more predictable
    • Archival storage: Cloud archival services are very cost effective for rarely accessed information
    • Business simplicity: One invoice for both on prem and cloud storage, thanks to the Amazon Marketplace metered-by-use program

Internet Unie summed it up this way:

“This hybrid service opens up enormous possibilities for those using the AWS service cloud offerings and need to store certain data types in a private cloud, for reasons such as data governance policies. With Cloudian’s new offering on AWS, our customers can point their applications to either cloud storage or on-premises storage, and it’s completely transparent,” said Arvid Cauwels, Sales Director at Internet Unie. “With AWS metering now available for Cloudian storage, customers get one AWS invoice for both their public and private cloud storage usage.”

Cloudian is a natural fit due to our native support for the Amazon S3 API, which makes it easy to tier between a Cloudian storage system in the Internet Unie data center and AWS cloud storage. Additionally, Cloudian supports AWS metering, which pulls all usage and billing (for both public and private cloud) into a single monthly AWS invoice.

Hybrid cloud represents a ‘best of both worlds’ solution, giving customers extra flexibility and control while providing limitless scalability. Read our blog post to learn more about why you should consider a hybrid cloud solution.

 

AWS re:Invent Attendees See Benefits of Hybrid Storage

AWS re:Invent was a fantastic show this year. The show has seen phenomenal growth, with over 32,000 attendees, up from 18,000 attendees last year.

AWS re:Invent

Many visitors were looking for solutions to let them integrate their on-premises operations with the cloud. By adopting a hybrid cloud storage approach, they would be able to capitalize on the scalability and cost of cloud storage when appropriate, while also maintaining the cost predictability and control of on-prem storage.

For these visitors, Cloudian proved to be the perfect fit. We provide 100% native Amazon S3 object storage, with automated tiering between the data center and the cloud. Our HyperStore solution is also available directly from AWS Marketplace, which means users can get all their usage and billing data within a single monthly invoice from AWS.

Steve Varner, Principal Data Engineer at Motorola Solutions, visited our booth and had this to say afterwards:

Steve Varner

Interested in learning more about Cloudian? Contact us or try it out for yourself.

 

5 Things You Need to Know About Hybrid Cloud Before You Start

You’ve probably heard the term hybrid cloud, but what is it, and what can it do for you?

It’s a particularly hot topic now because public cloud storage is growing in popularity. As it should be. Public cloud is inexpensive and solves real storage problems.

But public cloud is not for everyone and not for all data types. That’s where the hybrid cloud comes in. By combining public and on-prem storage into a single management pool, hybrid has the potential to deliver the best attributes of both worlds.

This blog series will give you industry perspective, tips, and tech background, so you can decide if hybrid cloud is right for you. We’ll give you the facts with no fluff. Let’s get started.

Here are five quick facts to put hybrid cloud in perspective.

  1. Hybrid cloud storage hype is real: 

Sometimes buzz is just noise, but with hybrid cloud the growing interest reflects real activity. A recent survey found that 68% of organizations said it’s in their deployment plans for the next two years. Typical motivations included:

    • Data Governance / Security: For data governance reasons, about half of organizations reported a need to keep some data on prem.
    • Cost: If data is frequently accessed, costs can quickly add up.
    • Performance: On prem applications may perform poorly when accessing data in the public cloud.
  1. Not all data will live in the public cloud
    Hybrid gives you the ability to keep sensitive data on-premises, rather than putting everything in the public cloud. In the survey, 59% of respondents agreed, stating that an average of 51% of their data needs to remain on prem. Typical use cases for hybrid cloud include:

    • Backup: Cut RTO by hours vs. either cloud or tape; save cost vs. conventional disk
    • Home directory: Keep frequently accessed files local, automatically tier cold files to the cloud
    • Compliance: Store sensitive file types on premise, automatically migrate others to the cloud
  1. Hybrid cloud offers better scalability than public cloud alone

Since a hybrid cloud connects public and private clouds, it provides a unified infrastructure lets you choose the most efficient infrastructure for specific data and workloads. For example, you can take advantage of the cost efficiency of Amazon’s S3 Infrequent Access tier or Amazon Glacier for backup or archive data, use Amazon S3 Standard to provide data access in different regions, while keeping the bulk of active data in a private cloud on-premises.

      1. A unified infrastructure also gives you a few benefits that public or private cloud alone don’t. Hybrid cloud eliminates silos of data, lets you keep data and applications on premises if you need to (usually for compliance or performance reasons), and is easier to manage than separate environments.
  1. Hybrid cloud saves cost

It’s usually true that cloud storage is less expensive than traditional SAN or NAS systems. Public cloud storage today costs as little as 0.4 cents per GB per month. But for frequently used data, access costs can add up. Hybrid cloud lets your store frequently accessed data locally, avoiding cloud data transfer charges. That data can be automatically tiered to the public cloud when it becomes cold. This lets you easily capitalize on the super-low cost of public cloud, while meeting your security, performance, and data governance objectives.

  1. Hybrid cloud will help you survive the data tsunami

The explosive growth of unstructured data is only going to accelerate. With more connected devices and the emerging internet of things (IoT), we’ll go from less than 2 billion devices in 2010 to more than 25 billion by 2020, according to analyst estimates.

That in turn is fueling massive data growth — from 4.4 zettabytes (ZB) in 2013 to 44 ZB in 2020 — much of it generated at the edge, not in the cloud. How will we manage, analyze and store all of that data? Implementing hybrid cloud now provides an architecture that can scale as we face a data tsunami over the next three years.

Next up, we’ll look at steps to get started with hybrid cloud.

5 Reasons to Adopt Hybrid Cloud Storage for your Data Center

Are you weighing the benefits of cloud storage versus on-premises storage? If so, the right answer might be to use both–and not just in parallel, but in an integrated way. Hybrid cloud is a storage environment that uses a mix of on-premises and public cloud services with data mobility between the two platforms.

IT professionals are now seeing the benefit of hybrid solutions. According to a recent survey of 400 organizations in the U.S. and UK conducted by Actual Tech, 28 percent of firms have already deployed hybrid cloud storage, with a further 40 percent planning to implement within the next year. The analyst firm IDC agrees: In its 2016 Futurescape research report, the company predicted that by 2018, 85 percent of enterprises will operate in a multi-cloud environment.

Hybrid has piqued interest as more organizations look to the public cloud to augment their on-premises data management. There are many drivers for this, but here are five:

  1. We now have a widely-accepted standard interface.

The emergence of a common interface for on-prem and cloud storage changes everything. The world of storage revolves around interface standards. They are the glue that drives down cost and ensures interoperability. For hybrid storage, the defacto standard is the Amazon S3 API, an interface that began in cloud storage and is now available for on-premises object storage as well. This standardization is significant because it gives storage managers new flexibility to deploy common tools and applications on-prem and in the cloud, and easily move data between the two environments to optimize cost, performance, and data durability.

  1. Unprecendented hybrid scalability delivers operational efficiency.

Managing one large, scalable pool of storage is far more efficient than managing two smaller ones. And hybrid storage is hands-down the most scalable storage model ever devised. It combines on-prem object storage – which is itself scalable to hundreds of PBs – with cloud storage that is limitlessly scalable, for all practical purposes. This single-pool storage model reduces data silos, and simplifies management with a single namespace and a single view — no matter where the data originated or where it resides. Further, hybrid allows you to keep a copy of all metadata on-premises, ensuring rapid search across both cloud and on-premise data.

  1. Best-of-breed data protection is now available to everyone.

Data protection is fundamental to storage. A hybrid storage model offers businesses of all sizes incredible data protection options, delivering data durability that previously would have been affordable to only the most well-heeled storage users. In a hybrid configuration, you can backup data to object storage on premises, then automatically tier data to the cloud for long-term archive (Amazon Glacier, Google Coldline, Azure Blob). This gives you two optimal results: You have a copy of data on-site for rapid recovery when needed, and a low-cost, long-term archive offsite copy for disaster recovery. Many popular backup solutions including Veritas, Commvault and Rubrik provide Amazon S3 connectors that enable this solution as a simple drop-in.

  1. Hybrid offers more deployment options to match your business needs.

Your storage needs have their own nuances, and you need the operational flexibility to address them. Hybrid can help with more deployment options than other storage models. For the on-premise component, you can select from options that range from zero-up-front cost software running on the servers you already own, to multi-petabyte turnkey systems. For the cloud component, a range of offerings meet both long-term and short-term storage needs. Across both worlds, a common object storage interface lets you mix-and-match the optimal solution. Whether the objective is rapid data access on-premises or long-term archival storage, these needs can be met with a common set of storage tools and techniques.

  1. Hybrid helps meet data governance rules.

External and internal data governance rules play a big part in data storage planning.  In a recent survey, 59% of respondents reported the need to maintain some of their data on premises. On average, that group stated that only about half of their data can go to the cloud. Financial data and customer records in particular are often subject to security, governance and compliance rules, driven by both internal policy and external regulation. With a hybrid cloud model, you can more easily accommodate the changing needs. With hybrid, you can set policies to ensure compliance, tailoring migration and data protection rules to specific data types.

While many are seeing the natural advantages of hybrid, some are still unsure. What other factors play in that I haven’t mentioned? With more and more being digitized and retained into perpetuity, what opportunities is your organization exploring to deal with the data deluge?

Cloudian Integrates with Google Cloud Archival Service

Cloudian Integrates with Google Cloud Platform’s New Archival Storage Service

Today Cloudian is part of the launch of Google Cloud Platform’s new long-term archive service, Google Cloud Storage Coldline. The new service is intended for companies looking for long-term data retention.

Coldline is highly available (99% availability SLA) and has low latency, making it easy to access and retrieve your data when you need it without having to wait days in between. Because the Coldline API is compatible with other storage classes, it works well with Google’s other storage classes, including Nearline.

Cloudian HyperStore is seamlessly integrated with Google Cloud Storage Coldline, and provides anywhere from terabytes to hundreds of petabytes of on-premises storage. Policy-based data migration lets you move data to Coldline based on rules such as data type, age, and frequency of access.

 

Google Cloud Platform logo

 

To enable rapid data search, metadata stubs are retained within Cloudian platform after data is migrated. The combination of on-premises storage, rules-based migration, and rapid search make it incredibly easy to store, manage, and retrieve your long-term data.

You can learn more about Google Cloud Storage Coldline and the ‘Switch and Save’ program on the official page.

Embracing Hybrid Storage

It’s no surprise that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a dominant force when it comes to the public cloud – it’s a $10B a year business, with nearly 10% of Amazon’s Q2 net sales attributed to AWS.

AWS Q2 net sales

While AWS has been touting public cloud since its inception, only recently has it started to acknowledge the need for hybrid storage solutions. Why? Because it’s simply not realistic for many companies to move all their data to the public cloud.

Private vs. Public Cloud

 

A company may choose to stay with private, on-premises storage solutions if they have existing data centers already in place. Or they may prefer the enhanced performance and extra measure of control that comes with on-premises storage.

Nonetheless, public cloud storage has significant advantages. It’s easy to implement, scales on demand, and automates many of the data management chores.

Neither option is clearly better than the other – in fact, customers are spending more than ever on both private and public cloud solutions. IDC forecasts that total IT spending on cloud infrastructure will increase by 15.5% in 2016 to reach $37.1B.The bottom line is that companies need both on-prem and cloud solutions.

The Best of Both Worlds: Hybrid Storage

 

What’s needed is a solution that allows you to enjoy that advantages of both — the speed and control of on-prem and the on-demand scalability of cloud. And ideally, you’d get both within a single, simple management model.

That’s what Cloudian HyperStore is. It’s S3 cloud storage that physically sits in your data center. And, it looks and behaves exactly like Amazon S3 cloud storage, so your apps that work with Amazon will work with Cloudian. Best of all, you can manage the combined Cloudian + Amazon S3 storage pool as a single, limitlessly scalable storage environment.

Amazon Makes It Easy

 

Fortune summed up Amazon’s need for a hybrid compute model in their recent article, stating:

It’s become clear that AWS, which is the leader in public cloud, will have to address this issue of dealing with, if not embrace, customers’ on-premises computing.

Thankfully, in the storage world they’ve already addressed this by adding Cloudian HyperStore directly to the AWS Marketplace. We announced this last month, but it bears repeating because it’s an important step in AWS’s evolution.

The advantages in moving towards hybrid storage are numerous. Everything folds up to AWS, so even usage and billing from private cloud will be centralized in the monthly AWS invoices. More importantly, Cloudian HyperStore was built from day one to be fully S3 compatible, which ensures complete investment protection.

So if you’re debating between public and private cloud options for your company, remember that you can still get the best of both worlds. Check out Cloudian HyperStore for a better hybrid storage solution with AWS and Amazon S3.

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