P R O D U C T P R O F I L E. Gridstore NASg: Network Attached Storage Grid

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1 Gridstore NASg: Network Attached Storage Grid Scale-Out NAS for the SMB Market June 2010 Smart start-up Gridstore has announced their Networked Attached Storage grid product NASg. NASg offers powerful and highly scalable enterprise-class file storage at an extremely attractive price point for the SMB and mid-tier markets. NASg s ease of deployment and remote management capabilities also make it a compelling proposition for the VARS and managed service providers serving this market. Networked Attached Storage (NAS) is found in storage environments from SMB up to the enterprise. It is a popular choice for a reason: NAS consolidates data from disparate storage locations to centralize management and file sharing. The challenge is that as useful as it is, traditional NAS has serious drawbacks in growing storage environments. Files on single NAS systems quickly outgrow disk capacity. It seems simple enough to add additional NAS appliances, but soon the devices inability to scale threatens file management throughout the file storage infrastructure. Even NAS clusters eventually reach the same saturation point. This is why scaled-out NAS entered the market a few years ago at the enterprise level. Scale-out NAS is file-based storage that creates storage pools to centralize sharing and management of massive amounts of files, usually through the use of a global namespace. This Product Profile will look at how scale-out NAS is becoming available to SMB, what SMB should look for in a scaled out NAS technology, and how newcomer Gridstore is solving problems of cost, performance, and scalability in this space. The File Challenge Tape-based storage usually satisfies SMB s long-term retention needs. But active files are another matter. Files like broadcast data, financial records, marketing images, or Web-based data need to be stored for immediate access and file management. At first file server storage is adequate, but soon growing file stores outstrip disk capacity on directattached storage. At this point many businesses adopt NAS for its file consolidation and familiar interface. For some of these environments, a single NAS appliance will serve until aging files are committed to tape for long-term storage. But for others especially companies that must keep rich content close at hand simply adding more NAS devices leads to a nightmare of poor 1 of 7

2 performance and frustratingly disparate file systems. As the NAS boxes multiply so do their problems: performance lag, rapidly diminishing floor space, maintenance overhead, and the inability to centrally manage files. Both SMB customers and their managed service providers (MSP) feel the pain of this hard-to-manage NAS storage, and customer costs rise while MSP profitability falls. The enterprise can and does experience the same challenge with overgrown NAS environments. But scale-out NAS technologies has been available to them for some time now. This type of approach builds NAS devices into central storage structures that globally manage bulk filebased data within infinite scalability. But enterprise-class scale-out NAS can be an expensive proposition in terms of purchase and ongoing management costs; deal-killers for SMB and their IT providers. Today that situation is changing. New economical and highly scalable NAS systems are creating scale-out NAS offerings for SMB. To qualify, products must meet several requirements. Some are by definition shared by any scale-out NAS system and others are specific to this market space. NAS seeks to avoid: creating disparate pools of storage using multiple NAS devices. And since file-based storage often stores vast amounts of small files, the scale-out NAS must be able to process frequent random I/O without slowing down drive speeds. High availability. Scale-out NAS has dozens to hundreds of storage nodes. Such a system cannot have a single point of failure from a single node, controller or management console, but must have built-in redundancy and fault tolerance. Downtime must also be kept at a minimum with hot modular upgrades and hardware replacements replacing disruptive upgrades. Scale-out NAS should also not require large-scale data migrations in or out of the system. Cost-effective OPEX and CAPEX. Scale-out NAS appeals to OPEX budgets by significantly lowering IT management overhead. But scale-out NAS should not replace these savings with ongoing capital costs from expensive proprietary storage nodes. For SMB, the most cost-effective approach is software that creates the scale-out NAS on commodity hardware. Scalable capacity and performance. A scale-out NAS must linearly scale performance and capacity with added storage nodes. It must create a single storage pool to avoid the very problem that scale-out Gridstore and NASg Gridstore was founded in The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with development facilities in 2 of 7

3 Dublin, Ireland. Gridstore s flagship technology NASg meets the scale-out NAS requirements for SMB with grid-based processing and capacity at an extremely low price point. NASg combines storage resources and processing power by aggregating large amounts of idle processing power from networked Windows PCs. The platform enables highly parallel processing and parallel storage I/O at a fraction of the cost of traditional enterprise-class NAS systems. The technology is architected using offthe-shelf storage nodes: small NAS devices that are easily added to the grid ( gridstore ). This capability is exceptionally cost-effective because NASg provides parallel processing and parallel storage I/O to create a highly reliable storage grid using low cost components. Windows XP, an Intel Atom core, 1GB of RAM, and up to 2TB of SATA hard disk drives. The NASg software is loaded into the Windows OS kernel as a low-overhead 300KB file, which appears as a network driver. NASg virtualizes each storage node and allocates its capacity to a file volume. A single gridstore can contain multiple volumes and storage nodes can provide resources to multiple volumes. NASg presents as a standard Microsoft network drive to applications and end-users. NASg combines unused storage capacity from off-the-shelf storage nodes and creates the shared file storage pool by striping data across the nodes. It also provides parallel processing by load balancing across all nodes in a gridstore. It efficiently distributes idle processing power from the networked nodes with little overhead. The PC-based processing operates at the speed of the network card. Each node adds processing, capacity and bandwidth to the storage pool for unlimited expandability. Nodes are redundant and may take over processing from one another. Each gridstore is completely configurable from the file volume level down to folders and the granular file level. Gridstore NASg features the Storage Block, an Intel/Microsoft-based storage node. Each node houses embedded Customers can add an unlimited number of storage nodes to the pool without sacrificing the system s performance or core simplicity. 3 of 7

4 Gridstore Features File Writes. Upon an application write or a file copy to a NASg volume, NASg first calculates the number of redundant storage nodes in a given volume. NASg slices the file is an equal number and writes it to the grid in parallel. File Reads. When an application reads a file, NASg sends a request in parallel to all storage nodes in the volume. Each node responds in parallel and the NASg client recombines slices back into the original file. Redundancy. NASg calculates redundancy similar to RAID-based redundancy calculations. NASg does not use internal replication, citing the extreme file duplication that can result from the practice and the resulting storage load. Parallel Processing. NASg builds the processing grid by aggregating available processing from client machines. This ability to leverage existing server and storage resources gives it a tremendous cost advantage in the SMB and service provider market. Parallel I/O. Following parallel processing, NASg sends data in parallel to each storage node. Adding more nodes does not retard performance but improves it, with more storage nodes providing higher levels of parallel I/O. NASg balances the load across the network to maximize network efficiency. High scalability. NASg scales using a networked storage block. The new Gridstore-configured server auto-detects a gridstore volume and requests to attach to it. The new capacity is immediately available to the system. Simple Deployment and Management. Gridstore s Starter Grid combines the NASg platform with pre-configured NASg storage nodes. A Starter Grid offers easy purchase and deployment and is tightly integrated with Microsoft OS and system tools. Gridstore also provides a single console with remote capabilities for simplified management. Benefits of NASg Storage Consolidation Benefit #1: Unlimited storage capacity. NASg creates a single pool of storage from an unlimited number of storage nodes. This single pool eliminates the management cost and risk of NAS storage sprawl. Gridstore s ability to leverage existing resources also makes growing storage capacity exceptionally economical. Benefit #2: Unlimited network bandwidth. NASg optimizes storage node bandwidth by eliminating network bottlenecks at the server level. Every configured storage node adds 1 Gb/s of parallel network bandwidth, which increases as additional nodes are added. 4 of 7

5 Benefit #3: Unlimited processing capacity. NASg enables multiple client machines to perform storage processing, which eliminates processing bottlenecks at the single controller level. Additional storage nodes deliver more parallel processing power. Benefit #4. Fault tolerant. There are no single points of failure with the Gridstore architecture. Multiple storage nodes can fail and NASg rebalances processing and data loads across remaining storage nodes. MSPs is to furnish their SMB customers with the NAS they need, but at a low price / high satisfaction /high profitability equation. When NAS grows beyond efficient management and requires frequent on-site visits to troubleshoot, customer satisfaction plummets and the poor ratio between expense and profit badly impacts the MSP. NASg and Managed Service Providers NASg features and benefits should come as particularly welcome news to small-tomid-size IT organizations, particularly managed service providers serving SMB customers. Their customers are facing the same severe storage sprawl that can overwhelm enterprise storage infrastructures. Some of these systems are maxed out on capacity, some on performance and some on both, and are extremely challenging to effectively manage. And since MSPs serve multiple customers facing the same challenge, they must deal with storage sprawl many times over. The result for the MSP is high cost, high risk for the data under their care, and diminishing profitability. This can have a serious impact on MSPs. SMBs are open to NAS with its familiar file-based storage structure. The key for The NASg storage platform lets MSPs profitably resell and support popular NAS storage at an extremely effective cost-toprofit ratio. Customers are happy because they receive a fault tolerant, scale-out NAS with high performance at a fraction of the price of similar systems. They also find the ability to reuse servers and storage particularly attractive. The MSP profits because NASg requires minimal support and management hours. Deploying the storage nodes is a simple process and can be easily done by the MSP s customer. The MSP does not have to dispatch a technician and the customer does not have to wait for one to arrive. 5 of 7

6 This decreases customer cost and increases MSP profitability right out the gate. As soon as the storage node comes online, the MSP uses the NASg management console from the MSP s offices to remotely allocate capacity to the new node. The management console is a Microsoft snap-in and can fit within the MSP s existing management framework. This centralized management capacity allows the MSP to manage the virtualized storage nodes from a single console, regardless of the size of the scaled grid. The MSP can also monitor thresholds and alerts via SNMP or WMI events. NASg s high redundancy and self-healing features also keep customer satisfaction high and site visits to a minimum. And with the sharp decrease in maintenance and management tasks, the MSP s technical staff can focus on added value work instead of maintenance tasks. Given these factors, MSPs can multiply revenue by reselling the NASg instead of disparate file servers or NAS devices when a customer needs to increase storage capacity. This is a daring message to MSPs but one that the market should bear out. Taneja Group Opinion We believe that Gridstore is a significant entrant in the scale-out NAS stakes. They are not attempting to break into the enterprise at this point, although remote and branch enterprise offices are a stated market segment. But their real advantage and opportunity lies in the managed SMB and mid-market space, where IT organizations and MSPs are primarily responsible for managing their business customers growing storage resources. And because the core system software is easily expandable, Gridstore s roadmap includes block-based capabilities for applications like Exchange and parallel storage for virtualized environments. However, Gridstore is not alone in this space. Other scale-out NAS makers are eyeing cost-effective measures even in the enterprise and are actively looking to push into the mid-market and SMB space. Gridstore will also have to overcome the objection of having to separately configure each storage block with the NAS software before adding it to a gridstore. Configuration is not an onerous task and some of it can be remotely managed by the MSP, but it must not appear to be burdensome to either SMB or their service provider. Finally customers must be clear that Gridstore is not creating essentially proprietary storage. Gridstore is built on the CIFS network protocol, which allows end-users to move or backup the data to any other storage platform. Customers and their MSPs can move and migrate data from the Gridstore system without undergoing vendor lock-in, or having to invest in data restore techniques should they wish to move the data to different storage systems. Assuming that these objections are met, Gridstore s competitive impact on the 6 of 7

7 SMB and mid-tier NAS market may well be a dramatic one. We find that with Gridstore entering the picture, we see a newly innovative approach to consolidating storage while optimizing efficiency for SMB and midtier customers and increasing profitability for their MSPs.. NOTICE: The information and product recommendations made by the TANEJA GROUP are based upon public information and sources and may also include personal opinions both of the TANEJA GROUP and others, all of which we believe to be accurate and reliable. However, as market conditions change and not within our control, the information and recommendations are made without warranty of any kind. All product names used and mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. The TANEJA GROUP, Inc. assumes no responsibility or liability for any damages whatsoever (including incidental, consequential or otherwise), caused by your use of, or reliance upon, the information and recommendations presented herein, nor for any inadvertent errors which may appear in this document. 7 of 7