Nexenta Blog
Why Nexenta? Employee Perspectives
06 Mar 2018 by Nexenta
Nexenta knows the Software-Defined Storage world. We consider ourselves experts within the industry, even across our various teams and job functions. Our tight-knit teams are constantly collaborating with different departments, partners, and customers around the world to leverage each others knowledge and point of views.
We also have passion for our products, company and industry. Whether it’s an Engineer working on the latest product update, or a Sales Rep talking to a new potential customer, our work is driven by passion and excitement for the technology and possibility in making a world impact on SDS.
Here at Nexenta, our employees not only believe in our Software-Defined Storage solution, but can wholeheartedly speak to it. We asked a few of our employees to talk about why they believe in Nexenta. Over the next few weeks we will be releasing entries from our employee’s point of view in a series we’re calling “Why Nexenta- Employee Perspective”. Here are the dates and people you can expect to hear from:
March 8th – Bill Fuller, VP, Engineering
March 14th- Jun Matsuura, Country Manager, Japan
March 20th- Eric Cho, Sales Engineer
March 26th- Rick Hayes, VP, Customer Service
Late Night Infomercials and the Data Center
15 Aug 2017 by Nexenta
Today’s storage administrators are looking for the best performance for the lowest cost to satisfy their enterprise data requirements. Performance is often improved by adding more solid state drives, but these come at a cost premium. For enterprises looking to save money and resources while meeting performance requirements- data reduction is a key component in creating the ideal solution.
Options for data reduction are classified into two main categories and each has their own purpose- data deduplication and compression.
Inline vs. Post-Process Deduplication
Data deduplication is, in its simplest form, a process of removing duplicates. Take this blog as an example- by the 11th word we already repeated the word “the”. With deduplication, that would remove 3 of the 59 words in the first paragraph. If we did this for every word in the first paragraph we would be down to 47 total words or about a 20% reduction.
There are two methods that storage systems accomplish this with data blocks today- inline or post-process. Inline means that as the data is written, the duplicates are noted and pointers are created instead of writing the full data. Post-process deduplication removes the duplicates on a scheduled basis.
Inline requires more compute resources, but post-process deduplication puts the user at risk if a large file is loaded on the system and fills the capacity before the system has a chance to deduplicate it.
Compression
Compression is the next option to reduce the amount of data stored and it is the one people are typically more familiar with, even if they don’t realize it. Anytime you download a .zip file, you are receiving a compressed file.
To give you a real world example, think of the popular vacuum bags (In the event that you live under a rock and haven’t seen these in action, here is a 13-minute infomercial all about them). Traditionally, when you fold clothes each item takes up a given amount of space. However, when you use space saving bags to remove as much of the air as possible, you reduce the amount of space needed to store the contents. The good thing about compression is that, in many cases, it has a minimal impact on the compute resources of a storage array and can even make the system perform more efficiently.
So which is better?
Both compression and dedupe have a place in the datacenter, but it’s important to understand when each is most effective. You will normally get your highest data reduction ratios with dedupe, but those are primarily going to apply to desktop and server virtualization workloads that have a lot of commonalities.
Even in this case, the use of technologies like linked clones for VMware View can reduce the need for deduplication. Messaging and collaboration tools are another space you will see deduplication used frequently, but this is often built into the application layer and relies less on the storage deduplication.
For most other workloads, compression is ideal- from files in Media and Entertainment, Databases, Analytics and more. Increasingly, you will see the use of compression become the most widely used and effective data reduction strategy.
How Backend Storage Impacts the Cloud
25 Jul 2017 by Nexenta
We all know that there are a variety of factors that impact application performance running on cloud infrastructure, such as network latency and bandwidth, server compute power and, one that is often overlooked, storage. Service providers need strong storage solutions supporting their infrastructure so they can differentiate themselves in this increasingly competitive space, while providing superior service and performance to their end users.
WebSupport, a leading European Cloud Service Provider supports thousands of customers, all requiring differing levels of performance and reliability. WebSupport needed to achieve specific performance metrics with their storage in a cost-effective manner. To solve their dilemma, they deployed an all-flash NexentaStor system that exceeds their performance requirements of 600K read IOPS and 300K write IOPS. Utilizing the advanced caching built into our filesystem, WebSupport is able to deliver 1.2M read IOPS. In addition, NexentaStor’s data reduction reduces their disk space capacity by 40%, providing additional cost-savings for their business.
Earlier this year, WebSupport ran their VPS performance benchmark test against some top regional and global Cloud Service Provider competitors in the market today. To learn more about the results of the testing and to get an in-depth analysis of their findings, read their Benchmarking White Paper here.
Declare Your Independence From Legacy Storage
29 Jun 2017 by Nexenta
Independence: [in-di-pen-duh ns], noun
Freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.
Today’s enterprise IT administrators are looking to declare their independence from the legacy vendors that have dominated the technology landscape for decades. This freedom has manifested in the form of software-defined solutions.
The revolution began in the late 1990s, when VMware was founded to disrupt the server empire that had long been controlled by mainframe systems from the likes of IBM and Sun Microsystems. The battle for dominance in the server world has now clearly been won by server virtualization software- still, the war wages on in the realm of enterprise storage.
Software-defined storage companies are now fighting to give power and flexibility back to the enterprise in key areas of their data centers. These solutions range from software-only products bundled into certified reference architectures to appliances that utilize a software-based solution to provide the freedom users need.
Freedom from Vendor Control
Storage Administrators no longer have to rely solely on the limited and costly tools offered by legacy vendors. The use of API-driven solutions, like NexentaStor, allows for simple automation and management. With Software-Defined, you now have control over what a configuration looks like for your business.
However, many companies want the benefits of software-defined without the hassle of piecing together their own configurations from scratch. Solutions like the Lenovo DX8200N give you the autonomy that software-defined affords, ranging from high performance all-flash configurations to all-disk archive systems, with the ease of an appliance model.
Freedom from Influence
Legacy vendors configure solutions to be as cost effective as possible for themselves and don’t place as much emphasis on the user’s needs or price challenges. Deploying a software-defined solution lets the user choose the drives they need and the speed they desire at a lower price point than traditional vendors.
An example of this is the numerous drive and PCI card options that are available with the Lenovo DX8200N. Your options range from 200Gb solid state drives to 4,6,8 and 10TB spinning disks with connectivity options including the latest Fibre Channel (FC) and IP connectivity. The freedom to customize a solution around your needs in a simplified manner is core to Nexenta SDS.
Freedom to Choose Your Support
Choosing to liberate your datacenter with software-defined does not mean that support will be lacking. There are many open source SDS products on the market that rely solely on community support. It can often take days, weeks or even longer to get help with a problem. That is a timeframe that enterprises cannot afford.
In contrast, a mature software-defined storage solution is not complicated to support. Nexenta has developed strong partnerships with key alliance partners, such as Lenovo, which ensures customers receive full support for the entire solution through Lenovo. Ultimately, this makes it simple to implement software-defined storage with full end-to-end support that enterprises need.
Freedom to Take Back Your Data Center
At its core, software-defined is about freedom. The freedom to make your own hardware choices, the freedom to run your enterprise with reliability and dependability, and the freedom to take control of your datacenter. Nexenta puts the power back in your hands and provides your company with the tools you need to win the battle, and as you move towards a full software-defined datacenter, one day win the war.
To learn more about the Lenovo DX8200N Powered by Nexenta, register for our upcoming webinar.
3 Simple Ways To Protect Your Data From Ransomware
28 Jun 2017 by Nexenta
By: Michael B. Letschin, Field CTO
Ransomware attacks have become one of the biggest threats to enterprise data. WannaCry was released just a few months back, and yesterday, an even more sophisticated attack was launched called Petya.
This new attack locks down a computer’s hard drive and demands payment in Bitcoin to unlock the user’s system. They claim it will send a password after payment, but there is a slim chance that a password that will ever arrive.
The one thing these attacks have in common is they are based on the EternalBlue tool that was leaked from the NSA. The tool specifically attacks vulnerabilities on Windows systems.
So how do you protect your corporate data? There are 3 Simple ways.
- Store your Data on a Centralized Storage Array like NexentaStor
Since the file services stack in NexentaStor is not based on Windows, these vulnerabilities are not present in our software and you can be more confident that your data won’t be at risk.
- Create a Snapshot Schedule
Another benefit of using an enterprise storage array is the ability to create a snapshot schedule that will allow you to roll back to a point in time before any attack on a connected system might have occurred. With unlimited snapshots in NexentaStor, you can be sure you have a timely and accurate copy of your data, regardless of user interactions.
- Replicate your Data to a Secondary System
Finally, a centralized array offers you the ability to replicate that data offsite to a secondary system within your own corporate firewall or even to one of the many service providers that use NexentaStor as their replication targets.
Data integrity has always been a core, fundamental component of the Nexenta software stack. We consistently make this a priority to ensure you get the full benefit of that and your critical corporate data isn’t held ransom. If you’d like to learn more about our storage solutions, click here.