Storage as a Service: Leverage the benefits of scalability and elasticity with Storage as a Service

Transcription

1 Storage as a Service: Leverage the benefits of scalability and elasticity with Storage as a Service Storage is one of the great opportunities for cloud computing, thanks to the scalability and elasticity of public cloud environments. Storage as a Service is a uniquely configurable solution that allows you to locate storage wherever it works best for you. WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS: Discover how Storage as a Service can enhance your storage strategy and give you flexibility Be advised of the steps to take for success Understand why the cloud is ideal for your Storage as a Service strategy Learn how TelecityGroup s Cloud-IX can provide a secure and reliable connection between you and your cloud service provider

2 THE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY DEFINING STORAGE AS A SERVICE Many companies have embraced the power of cloud computing, but putting native storage in the cloud can be more challenging. Local storage provided via a physical storage array is fast, reliable, and highly configurable. In many cases, legacy applications may need to access it that way, because they rely on specific storage formats. Yet storage is one of the great opportunities for cloud computing, thanks to the scalability and elasticity of public cloud environments. Written by Aditya Ayyagari, TelecityGroup David Hall, TelecityGroup Running separate in-house or colocation storage alongside cloud storage may give you the benefit of both worlds, but another option is to use a service that acts like both a native storage array and a cloud storage service in one package utilising virtual extensions. This provides all the flexibility of the cloud, with all the control and performance of a native storage array. TelecityGroup has given customers an approach to storage that offers all the benefits of a cloud infrastructure, with the security and interface capabilities of an in-house solution. Storage as a Service provides high-performance storage, accessible via standard application interfaces, with cloud computing s appealing cost and capacity models. Recent development in virtual storage technologies mean that cloud-based storage can act like a physical array, but in reality is a set of storage resources located wherever works best for the customer including TelecityGroup s own colocation data centres, or the cloud. Storage as a Service has traditionally been used for workloads including the following: Cloud-based back up, archive and disaster recovery. Sharepoint, and other collaborative services, especially if the data is going to be accessed by a variety of end points. Storage of infrequently used files. With TelecityGroup s Cloud-IX offering, these use cases can be extended to the following as well: Moving content or other data closer to web front-ends, especially if web caching in the cloud. Large, exponentially growing volumes of unstructured or transactional data. Cloud-based storage can offer several benefits: Control You pay for storage in a cloud-based model, but get to define parameters that would not normally be available in the cloud. These include control performance, I/O settings, drive types, and RAID configurations. Accessibility Legacy applications can access Storage as a Service in the same way that they would access regular storage arrays, with support for shared block access, specific disk formats and clustered arrays. Multi-tenant environment with a single-tenant experience You see your storage as a single array, but get to enjoy cloud-style benefits such as automatic replication to a variety of global sites, storage elasticity, automatic data replication and no up-front cost.

3 DEFINING STORAGE AS A SERVICE CHALLENGES Opportunities A high degree of storage control Accessibility by legacy applications Multi-tenant environment, single-tenant experience. Challenges Creating a single source of truth Data jurisdiction issues Legacy applications STEPS TO SUCCESS Storage as a Service is a uniquely configurable solution. You can locate storage wherever works best for you. This provides you with unprecedented storage flexibility, but also requires some careful planning to create the best possible scenario for your company. 1. Plan your application portfolio The move to Storage as a Service is your chance to segment and configure data to best support the kinds of applications that you re running. Define your application portfolio to understand which applications will access your data, how and where. 2. Define your usage model What are your priorities for your data? Is it important to keep it in your own data centre, or is a colocated storage model adequate? To how many locations do you need to replicate data for your risk management and performance requirements? How much capacity will you need? The beauty of Storage as a Service is that you can set these parameters and customise your own setup. 3. Analyse your data protection needs Understanding your data protection requirements is crucial. To what extent is disaster recovery important as a part of your strategy? Are you encrypting data while it is stored on disk, and do you understand the performance overhead involved in doing that? 4. Migrate your data Create a migration plan to move your on-site or colocated data sets into the Storage as a Service environment. This will involve the use of third party tools, but once the data has been migrated, replication across different virtual storage arrays at different locations can happen automatically. There is no more need for third-party replication tools running in-house. Companies trying to maintain in-house storage alongside a cloud storage environment will face a variety of challenges that can be alleviated by a solution that offers the benefits of both storage approaches in one package. No single source of truth If you operate a native storage array on-site or in a colocation facility while also maintaining a separate cloud version, you will incur an overhead by keeping the two sets of data in sync. Failing to keep the two data sets identical could cause problems for applications and impact your business. Finite resources Your in-house native array may run into scalability problems as your storage requirements increase. Adding more disk space will max out the headroom on your controllers, choking off your I/O capability. Legacy applications You can provision more I/O and more capacity in your cloud storage contract, but some legacy applications have difficulty accessing it. Many cloud service providers cannot support applications designed to work in-house. They often need block storage access, where blocks are accessed like individual hard drives. Data jurisdiction issues The other problem with a purely cloud-based storage solution is that you do not always have control over where your data is stored. A cloud service provider may let you configure I/O throughput but you ll trade off knowledge of where your data resides, presenting legal problems. Latency issues Even if Storage as a Service contracts do allow companies to dictate where their data is stored and replicated, there are still technical barriers. In practice, applications may be sensitive to geographic latency, making it difficult to store them too far from specific application servers. Again, this is a challenge that TelecityGroup s Cloud-IX platform can help overcome. A combination of Layer 3 MPLS virtual circuits (that can be monitored for performance) and, where required, colocation-based storage that sits close to the cloud onramp makes latency no longer a barrier to incorporating storage as a service into IT architectures. ACCELERATING DIGITAL : USING HYBRID CLOUD RESOURCES TO DELIVER BUSINESS OUTCOMES Watch this TelecityGroup Webinar featuring Gartner for advice on how to get the most from your hybrid cloud solution. WATCH WEBINAR 2015 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

4 HOW THE CLOUD CAN HELP USING CLOUD-IX FOR STORAGE AS A SERVICE A Storage as a Service model maintains the high degree of control and configurability that you find in native physical storage arrays, with a set of well-established benefits inherent in a cloud environment. These benefits include the following: Elastic capacity Storage as a Service enables customers to use only as much storage as they need. They can quickly scale up storage as required to cope with volatile data requirements, simply by agreeing the availability of new storage nodes in advance. Elastic cost Storage as a Service represents a move towards 100% operational expenditure, moving storage costs from the balance sheet to the profit and loss sheet. This eliminates the need for up-front capital expenditure on storage arrays. Chargeback Storage as a Service enjoys the same detailed level of reporting as many other cloud-based services. Companies can deliver usage metrics to their own users, enabling them to demonstrate the value to internal departments. Industry compliance Companies may have specific compliance requirements that govern how and where their data is stored. A cloud-based storage service provider will already be well versed in these requirements and will have perfected the internal technology and processes to support them. Access anywhere Storing data in the cloud enables companies to make it available to users on a mobile basis, on a multitude of devices in different locations. This represents far more flexibility than data located internally on a network attached storage device, for example. It enables companies to unlock more value in their information by delivering it at critical times, as and where needed. TelecityGroup s Cloud-IX is your on-ramp to a Storage as a Service solution that will collapse your native physical storage array and cloud-based storage into a single high-performance pay-as-yougo service. Here s how this cloud service connection will enable your Storage as a Service strategy. Simplicity Cloud-IX makes Storage as a Service available to you wherever you happen to be, in a way that s simple. Legacy applications can access storage in any number of TelecityGroup s data centres or cloud service partners, as if it was running on the same network. Security Cloud-IX provides a secure, encrypted pipeline to a Storage as a Service infrastructure that can also encrypt data at rest, providing multiple layers of data protection. Performance Cloud-IX s pipeline into a Storage as a Service environment is based on TelecityGroup s MPLS network, providing a guaranteed quality of service for customers. We also maintain a broad array of data centre locations for caching and replication. This removes many latency boundaries for clients, who are able to map their own required data storage and access locations to the available infrastructure from the Storage as a Service provider. High availability Cloud-IX enables companies to manage availability and SLAs without investing in the skillsets and tools necessary to support them internally. Companies can point to a single agreement around service levels and availability, and use that to co-ordinate their own release schedules quickly and effectively. Intergration support Cloud-IX provides not only a guaranteed quality of service, but also the functionality to integrate corporate applications with the cloud-based storage provided by third-party service providers. Clients can benefit from ready-to-deploy APIs, removing the headaches associated with setting up data access. ASSESS YOUR CLOUD STRATEGY Is your cloud strategy on the right path for digital transformation? CONTACT AN EXPERT Request a free cloud strategy consultation with our cloud experts. ASSESS YOUR CLOUD STRATEGY CONTACT AN EXPERT

5 Outstanding data centres Expertise you can trust. A leading European data centre provider. Contact us: cloud-ixenquiries@telecity.com Phone: +44(0)