Nexenta Blog

Employee Perspective: Why Legal Professionals Should Embrace SDS

06 Apr 2018  by Nexenta

Photo by Sanwal Deen on Unsplash.

The legal profession traditionally moves very slowly when it comes to new technologies. Some might even say that attorneys have a difficult time changing. They prefer technologies tested repeatedly before adopting them. However reluctantly, the legal profession has finally agreed that the internet is here to stay and that perhaps this cloud-computing thing might be of great help in a various number of tasks.

The only industry known for more paperwork than the legal profession is the federal government, and that might be a toss-up. Hence, this need to store and quickly access this information is where software-defined storage solutions can help the legal profession. Along with the growing need to be able to store the generated paperwork the legal profession produces, the modern workplace has also created a need for distributed computing. Attorneys may need to be able to work from home when their child is sick and cannot go to school. Clients want to be able to e-sign documents. Immigration attorneys file court documents and immigration applications with the click of a button. Defendants upload lawsuit documents to the cloud and share them with their attorney. Companies working on an M&A rely on the search capability of their computers to find requested documents in a timely manner. The new millennials in the office worry about how many trees die every time they print another document. All of these changes create digital paperwork, and it has to be stored somewhere.

Racks of servers have started to replace the ubiquitous filing cabinet. The main needs in a law office for digital storage include – security, ease of use, fast, and redundant. Software-defined data storage meets all of these requirements. The ability for a law firm’s systems administrator to create a private cloud with the flexibility to use whatever hardware fits their needs, while saving costs with Nexenta is huge. In addition, it can be scaled. A small town firm might just have a few terabytes of data. And, a large busy firm, who had just digitized fifty years’ worth of files, can scale the solution to store many petabytes of data. Both firms trust that the technology they are using will not corrupt and cause them to lose information. The legal profession is finally ready for the future of easily searchable and secure software-defined data storage solutions.

-Mavis Yee, Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel

Employee Perspective: How to Build a Thriving Storage Ecosystem

26 Mar 2018  by Nexenta

Infrastructure leaders face the daunting task of keeping up with the business at the same time dealing with a technology landscape that is changing at a relentless pace.

Gone are the days when the only thing we had to manage was the data center. Today’s businesses are demanding that infrastructure leaders orchestrate internal and external systems and services in an efficient and effective manner.

The one thing we can count on in our line of work is that everything in our environment will land into one of three system states:

  • Legacy systems – Those that you just can’t seem to get rid of. They are getting more expensive by the day and are distracting from other work.
  • Steady State – The core production systems that are running your business and need most of your attention.
  • Inbound Projects – The laundry list of requests for resources to support initiatives ranging from the well thought-out and resourced, to the unfunded science project that failed to account for any of the supporting infrastructure.

You can survive by hunkering down and holding projects at bay, but let’s face it; that is a very limited survival strategy. The other option is to chose to thrive by building an ecosystem that is designed to facilitate change. Position yourself as a pragmatic visionary that cannot only keep your infrastructure running but you can also leverage new technologies to deliver a dynamic and cost effective ecosystem.

Having seen many different people and organizations trying to solve the same problems over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that a keen understanding of flexibility is something that all successful infrastructures leaders have in common.  By building an ecosystem that accounts for the smooth transition through the lifecycle, successful infrastructure leaders reduce operational friction, freeing up resources to support the emerging technologies. Having worked with and observed many successful infrastructure leaders over the years, I have noticed that even the best of them struggled with a lack of flexibility in their storage environments.   The industry has come along way with compute and network by realizing much of the flexibility potential that disciplines have to offer. Storage however, seemed to be held hostage by proprietary systems that had no interest of playing well within the ecosystem. Being a major line item in any budget, this lack of flexibility left most infrastructure leaders frustrated, me included. Then, along came Nexenta.

Nexenta is the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage- what we call Open Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS). We uniquely integrate software-only “Open Source” collaboration with industry standard hardware-centric “Software-Defined Storage” (SDS) innovation.  The OpenSDS model finally gives infrastructure leaders the flexibility they need to deal with the onslaught of the hybrid-cloud revolution, Big Data and AI just to name a few.  Instead of guessing which legacy storage array (handcuffs) to buy you can now service the majority of your needs through a common and expansive product portfolio:

When we talk about flexibility, simplicity is often the key. Looking at what is needed to support the dynamic ecosystems, it’s important to understand that in it’s simplest form the majority of the data is going to land on block, file or object storage somewhere. With the OpenSDS model you can meet a wide variety of use cases by modifying the underlying hardware but still have common operations across all platforms. As your needs change the storage can be adjusted to accommodate those needs without a wholesale change to your infrastructure. Additionally, as you settle into your consumption and usage patterns you can tune the underlying hardware that best supports your use case. Nexenta’s SDS solutions are just in time to solve your problems, and are made for you.

-Rick Hayes, VP, Customer Service 

Employee Perspective: A Multi-Protocol Solution

20 Mar 2018  by Nexenta

After three and a half years at Nexenta, I joined another storage software company, an early stage start up. It was all very exciting and seemed like an amazing opportunity for me to share my software-defined storage skills and knowledge to help customers be successful and grow the company. Unfortunately, after four months I parted ways due to several factors.

At first, I was really impressed with the work the engineering team had done to build a software-defined storage (SDS) product with such intentionality. However, there were several factors that I began to question:

  1. It’s still hard to convince customers to change from old habits to SDS.

Software Defined Storage isn’t the new buzz word it once was. Companies can find it a difficult paradigm to accept when it’s compared to appliance-based storage. Humans don’t like change, even if it’s a good kind of change. So it takes a lot of effort by a sales team to help bridge that gap of doubt. Customers want to see demo’s, proof of concepts (POCs), technical deep dives, customer references, the list goes on and on. And it’s all reasonable. When faced with something different and new, many customers want to be thorough to ensure that you’re making the right choice. Nexenta is the leader is SDS, with a 6000+ customers deployments that run their products. Any new customer can have the confidence that they aren’t the only person on the planet running SDS- and that they were in fact choosing the right solution as many enterprises are making the switch.

  1. SDS is perfect for large quantity of storage.

Specializing in all-SSD storage arrays that were software defined was initially an interesting concept, as I thought by leveraging SATA based SSDs you could help adopt an all-ssd platform at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately, NAND flash market and SATA SSDs are not significantly cheaper than SAS SSDs (in some cases they’re more expensive). All SSD prices are only getting higher. On the other hand, spinning drives couldn’t be any cheaper. Software-defined storage makes the most sense in high capacity use cases such as archive, backup, and file servers. These are all use cases that don’t require the fastest performance but do require good enough performance. The fact that Nexenta can drive down the overall cost of storage is a major bonus. This is Nexenta’s bread and butter.

  1. Hardware Certifications.

HCL list allow customers to take and combine parts together to form a franken-build. This gives flexibility to keep costs low and/or maximize performance, but it leads to the unfortunate side effect of unstable systems. Certain SAS cards don’t work well, network card drivers aren’t stable, the list goes on and on. Nexenta uses a reference architecture where builds are validated through the major server vendors and customers have the guidance they need on what hardware works best. This is the ideal way to do it. Enterprises want consistency and predictability. An archaic method is to provide the flexibility of the systems without fully understanding the implications of stability and predictability.

  1. Protocal flexibility is key.

Since day 1, Nexenta has been a multi-protocol solution. NFS, SMB/CIFS, iSCSI, FC, Object… it’s all covered. For tier 1 use cases (which Nexenta does dabble in), block is available. For file services, SMB/CIFS/NFS is available. Protocol flexibility is a key component to a software defined storage platform. Outdated methods try to just go the file route. While the protocol is fast, trying to get customers to adopt an all-SSD, software defined storage platform that’s just file is a lot to stomach. Situations can arise where customers have FC storage networks and don’t want to just throw them away. Or potentially a customer could be using iSCSI with a specific file system that they liked. Nexenta is able to provide connectivity in whatever way a customer wants and that helps to ease people into this SDS paradigm

So after a few months of being away from Nexenta I asked if I could have the opportunity to rejoin and thankfully there was space for me. I’m excited about rejoining a team and a product that I know well. I’m grateful for all the people I met in this journey but Nexenta is home and I’m glad to be back.

-Eric Cho, Sales Engineer 

Employee Perspective: Software Defined Infrastructure and Hybrid Cloud Systems

14 Mar 2018  by Nexenta

Companies consider cloud usage for enterprise IT infrastructure, yet the majority of data stays in its own organization. They have to decide what data and system should go public and private. Two big trends, Big Data and Cyber Security, do not allow them enough time to construct both systems in public and private separately. Data and security threats are increasing enormously in such short period, and will continue to do so. IT organization also needs to face the fact that they cannot have both an unlimited budget and time for the infrastructure to solve those issues. In this case, I believe Software Defined Infrastructure and Hybrid Cloud systems are the solution. It gives you the tremendous flexibility to adopt the system to public and private cloud based on the commodity hardware platform.

Nexenta software-based storage solutions are seeing the big and promised opportunities in this area. We are facing many customers that are stuck with legacy hardware-based storages and infrastructures, who cannot move to other storage or infrastructure solutions because of those vendor lock-in systems. With Nexenta Software solutions, IT organizations can store their increasing data securely in public and private cloud. The solutions are based on industry standard hardware, so they can have true Software-Defined Infrastructure and keep the system flexibility long term.. This is a resolution for both now and the future as IT organization can enjoy the benefits of hybrid cloud flexibility at reasonable costs with tight security.

I personally believe hybrid cloud is the ultimate goal for anybody, not only for enterprises, but also individuals. For example, in my house I put my own private data in my home HDDs, but I also connect to public cloud like Google Photo to enjoy to access from any device, anytime, anywhere. I believe we all personally select what data stays private, while at the same time, think about saving cost saving and increasing flexibility.. The infrastructure consideration in terms of the balance among security, cost and flexibility are a little behind as people see fancier appearance of the services appealing. What matters is the infrastructure is the behind those services- is it the right solutions for our future from personal and business life. I have worked for Nexenta about three and half years, facing these keen critical subjects for enterprise customers. I strongly believe Software-Defined Infrastructure with hybrid cloud is the only solution that meets the goal for those enterprise customers. I am happy to a part of this solution at Nexenta.

– Jun Matsuura, Country Manager, Japan

Employee Perspective: SDS – Bringing parity to the rest of the infrastructure stack

08 Mar 2018  by Nexenta

When you purchase any OS today, it doesn’t come locked to specific hardware (sorry Apple). I can purchase Microsoft Office and it doesn’t care if I’m running it on a Dell PC, an Acer/Supermicro/HP. If you use applications like Salesforce you aren’t worried about the hardware. They are totally independent of the underlying hardware, and each is sized according to the job at hand. You buy hardware to fit your budget, on aesthetics, or its gaming performance (if you are my son). You buy software similarly and largely because it provides a function you need. So then why are so many people still buying storage hardware and software that are tied together?

Now, there are things I purchase that I expect to be fully integrated. I don’t want to have to assemble a car by myself – the major parts are not typically standard and I don’t want to have to understand how to assemble an automobile. However, today’s enterprise class storage products use the same devices, same processors, motherboards, add on cards that you find in any industry standard servers. They run on variants of, or even standard versions of common operating systems. Why are they bundled with a proprietary set of software? Most companies already have the talent to install, setup, customize and manage their IT infrastructure (in fact, you are forced to because those same Storage vendors aren’t going to do it for you). You have the expertise to create solutions that match your needs. You don’t need to be forced into a bundled solution.

Not only does it not make sense technically, it doesn’t make sense economically. Why face 3 year leases after which you need to replace your storage subsystems (including software) and often face the daunting task of migrating all of your data? It’s archaic and barbaric. There is an alternative.

Software-defined. In this case, Software-Defined Storage (SDS). The ability to merge the best storage functionality with the best underlying hardware and then maintain the currency and validity of that software and hardware with no impact on your data. Stay current, stay competitive. Sounds like a no brainer.

Storage functionality is a software value and function. It has to be. You can’t stay current much less competitive if anything other than the most critical functions are in the hardware (hardware that anyone can purchase). Installing storage functionality software shouldn’t be any harder than installing an OS – and it isn’t with NexentaStor.

This gives you the flexibility to keep up with the emerging trends in the Hybrid-multi cloud revolution/shift due to Big Data getting even Bigger w AI/ML/Robotics/Cyber … You don’t need to engage in long negotiations on bundled storage solutions that won’t keep pace with the rate at which data is accumulated, changed and used. You wouldn’t take weeks to roll out a new server – you can’t afford the delays. Your data is passing you by.

With Nexenta you have all the features and functions, all the performance with all the flexibility and hardware independence you expect at every other level in your IT infrastructure. You’re not buying a car, you’re enabling your business. Go software defined.

-Bill Fuller, Vice President, Engineering

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