How Rigid Non Living Storage Fails Cloud Service Providers

Transcription

1 Dragon Slayer Consulting MarcStaimer W H I T E P A P E R HowRigid Non Living Storage FailsCloudServiceProviders

2 How Rigid Non Living Storage Fails Cloud Service Providers And what you can do about it. MarcStaimer,President&CDSofDragonSlayerConsulting Overview Change.ThewordaloneimmediatelyelicitsanxietyinITprofessionalsresponsiblefortheirorganization s computinginfrastructure.forthestorageadministrator,changeistobeavoidedbecauseinthemindsof many, that s when things break, especially with SAN, NAS, and Unified storage. And yet, change has become inevitable in today s rapidly evolving computing environment. Virtualization; petabytes to exabytes of stored data; always on 7 by 24 by 365 world economy; rising user expectations; expanding power and cooling requirements; larger more expensive data centers; and more are stretching and consistently breaking traditional storage infrastructure. This is compelling IT organizations to look at CloudServicesasaviablealternative. Cloud Services provides IT organizations an alternative to traditional computing infrastructure.they no longerhavetobeitexpertstohaveworldclassitoperations.theycanruntheirbusinessefficiently,do their jobs, no longer waste precious human cycles on IT, and do so at an equal or lower total cost of ownership.cloudserviceshasshownsignificantvalueincuttingapplicationdevelopmenttime,reducing deploymentcostswithequivalentorbetterquality,increasingusercontrol,enhancinggovernance,faster timetomarket,greaterflexibility,andlowercosts.itisheretostay. However, as service providers have delivered Cloud Services, they ve quickly discovered they re not immunefromthesamestorageproblemsaffectingtheircustomers.thishascausedsevereangstand consternation about the shortcomings of traditional DAS, NAS, and SAN storage systems. These shortcomingsreartheiruglyheadmuchsoonerforserviceprovidersbecauseofthelargescaleoftheirit ecosystems.itbecomesreadilyapparentthattraditionalstoragesystemsareincapableofmeetingcloud Services needs and requirements without throwing large amounts of money and/or people at the problems,somethingfewserviceprovidershaveinabundance. Therootcauseoftheseserviceproviderheadachesistheextremelyrigidapproachoftraditionalstorage systems.they redesignedfordifferentmarketrequirementsandcandidlyadifferenteraincomputing. Theyaremuchmoremanuallylabor intensiverequiringextensivestorageadministratorexpertise.this has been acceptable in the corporate IT world where experts manage the system complexity,capacity, performance, and operations as well as data protection. Experts are required because these storage functions must be prognosticated and pre planned with amazing accuracy well in advance of need. Changestostoragecapacityorperformancenotanticipatedandaccountedfor,createsamadscramble withpotentiallydireconsequences,inadditiontoacutelevelsofstress.technologyrefreshisanother extremely time consuming and costly aspect of these legacy rigid storage systems that taxes the Cloud Servicesserviceprovidertothebreakingpoint.Thelegacystoragemodeljustdoesnotworkverywellor atallforthisnewmodel,especiallyforthecloudservicesprovider. Storagevendorsarguethattheirsystemshaveevolvedwithadvancedsoftwarefunctionality.Although true to a point, the end result does not make their systems more alive, or less rigid, or even less expensive. DragonSlayerConsulting Q

3 Thelackofdynamism,adaptability,flexibility,resilience,andbuilt inintelligencefallswellshortofcloud Servicesneeds.Totopitoff,non livingstoragesystemcostperformanceiscompletelyout of linewith CloudServiceproviderrequirements.TheyneedSANstorageorbetterperformancebutatsignificantly lowercosts.marketconditionsrequirecloudservicesproviderstoprovidetheirserviceatacompellingly lowercostthantheircustomerscanprovidethemselves.withstoragebeingsuchahugepartofthetotal costofownership,gettingcontrolofthecostsareessential.traditionalstoragesystemsjustdonotallow thecloudservicesprovidertodothis. This white paper will take a deeper look at Cloud Services operational and financial requirements; the problems legacy non living storage systems cause Cloud Service providers; how and why the work aroundsfail;aswellasthebestwaytosolvetheseproblemsrightnow. DragonSlayerConsulting Q

4 Table of Contents Overview... 2 Deploying Cloud Services with Non Living Storage Does Not Work... 5 Multi Tenant...5 HighlyScalableFromVerySmalltoVeryLarge...5 Pay For UseParadigm...7 LooselyCoupledService...8 TransparentDataResilience...8 SimpletoImplement,Operate,andManage...9 Real World Work Arounds and Why They re Inadequate... 9 Organic Storage Meets or Exceeds Requirements ScalityRING:TheLeadingOrganicStorageSystem...11 Conclusion DragonSlayerConsulting Q

5 Deploying Cloud Services with Non Living Storage Does Not Work Cloud Service provider success comes from leveraging the following key aspectsofcloudtechnology: Multi tenant HighlyContinuouslyScalableFromVerySmalltoVeryLarge PayforUseParadigm Loosely CoupledService Transparentdataresilienceandsecurity SimpletoImplement,Operate,Manage This is what defines Cloud Services technologies and where traditional storage systems come up short. Financially,traditionalstoragesystemscomeupevenshorter. CommonsensemakesitclearthatCloudServiceprovidersmustprovideanequivalentorbetterlevelof service IT organizations are accustomed to by delivering the services themselves. But, Cloud Service providersneedconsiderableeconomiesofscaletobeabletoprovidethoseservicesatacostpointthat enablesthemtomakeaprofit.storageisahugepartofthecloudserviceproviders cost.regrettably, traditionalstoragenevergetstothosenecessaryeconomiesofscale.atleastnottothepointthatmakes those Cloud Services cost effective and compelling. A deeper examination of the requirements shows why. Multi Tenant Multi tenant means that in a shared Cloud Services environment, a specific client is the only one who can ever see or access his or her own data. Neither service provider employees nor other clients can everdeliberatelyoraccidentallyaccesstheirdata.thisrequiresboth applicationandstoragemulti tenancy.itisthestoragemulti tenancy thatisbitmorecomplicated. Encryption methods require key management by the application or user.integratedcharge backbillingforthestorageresourcesactually utilized is an anathema to most traditional storage systems. Virtual namespaceswithinthestoragesystemareamustsothatresellerscan provideuniqueserviceswithouthavingtohavecompletelyseparatedcostlystorageinfrastructures.once againthisisrarefortraditionalstoragesystems. This lays the responsibility completely on the service provider. They have to go to a lot of trouble and timedeveloping,documenting,supporting,fixing,andpatchingacustomizedapplicationtoovercomethis shortfall.qualityassuranceisachallengeassystemschangeorsoftwareonthosesystemschange. Legacystoragesystemswerejustnotarchitectedformulti tenancy.withalotofwork,effort,andcost, multi tenancy can be bolted on, but that work is not a one time effort. The work is ongoing. More importantly, the result tends to not be adaptable to the constantly changing customer base and requirementsofthecloudserviceprovider.inotherwords,thisisnotaviablelong termsolution. Highly Scalable From Very Small to Very Large It is the ability to scale to extraordinary levels, from dozens of petabytes to exabytes, that makes the Cloud Services business model viable. It gives service providers economies of scale enabling them to DragonSlayerConsulting Q

6 provide a compelling business case for their models. One of the key components to a Cloud service s scalabilityisthestorage. Ask any storage vendor if their storage is highly scalable and they will vigorously say yes. What does highlyscalable mean?howisitdefined?moreoftenthannotitisamatterofdegreedirectlyaffected byexperienceandorganizationalrequirements.whatishighlyscalableforanenterpriseisnotevenclose foracloudservicesoperationandoverkillforasmb. Highly scalable Cloud Services Storage has 3 Separate Scalable Components: 1. Capacity the amount of usable (not raw) storage per discrete system image. Cloud Services storage requirements are vastly greater than other market segments. Mid range storagecapacitiesareconsideredhighlyscalableiftheyscaleuptothelowpbs.enterprisestorageis considered highly scalable if it scales up to a couple dozen PBs. Cloud Services storage requires usablestoragetoscaleintotheebs. SimplemathmakesitclearthatwhenmultitudesofSMBs,SMEs, evenenterprisesareconsolidatedintoacloudservice,theirdata (usable storage) must be aggregated as well. Legacy storage systems were never designed for this level of usable capacity scalability. They have fixed limits. Capacity is limited by the number and capacity of HDDs supported per controller and the numberofcontrollersclusteredpersystem.bottleneckstendto be the controller architecture s front end, back end or IO. To achieve cloud scalability requires numerousdiscretelymanagedsystemsthatendupcreatingwhatisknownasstoragesystemsprawl. AndstoragesystemsprawlisahugeproblemforCloudServiceproviders. Storage admin task capability does not scale. This is common sense, people do not scale. Many storage system tasks are manual and labor intensive. These tasks tend to be time consuming and errorprone.someofthesetasksincludesettingupraidgroups,snapshotrules,tieringpolicies,lun masks and multiple pathing for SAN storage, file systems and mounts for NAS systems. And that s justsomeofthesetasks.eachspecifictaskbyitselfisnotthatdifficult.doingeachofthosetasks overandoveragainwithinatightcontrolledtimeframesetsthestageforhighstress,errorsthathave tobebackedoutandthetask(s)redone,andincreasingfrustration.theresultisincreasedscheduled andunscheduleddowntime. Users of cloud services are not tolerant of downtime. They expect an always on, always available service.noticeabledowntimeisunacceptable.thedaysofexpecteddowntimeduringmaintenance windowsisover.softwareupdatesmustbeperformedonlineandsanandnaslengthyfilesystem checksafterarestartareoutoftheequation. FailuretomeettheseserviceexpectationsisoftenfatalfortheCloudServiceprovider.Thebusiness model is based on providing their service at a lower cost than their customers can provide themselves.whenstoragecosts,includingoperatingstoragecosts,growconsiderablyfasterthanthe usablestorage,orcustomerexpectationsarenotmet,thentheserviceproviderbusinessmodelfails. 2. Performance CloudServicescustomersexpectandrightfullyso,thattheirserviceperformancewillnotdegradeas their stored data increases. Nor do they expect their service performance to degrade when other customers of the service scale their stored data. Just as traditional storage has static capacity DragonSlayerConsulting Q

7 limitations, it also has rigid performance limitations as well. Storage system performance can be tuned or increased somewhat by adding more hard disk drives(hdds), faster HDDs, short stroking HDDs,addingSSDs,orFlashCache,evenRAMCache.Thesetuningparametersextendperformance butataveryhighpricethatdoesnotjustifythemarginalincreasesinperformance.ultimatelythese legacy storage systems have acute maximum performance limits that no amount of tuning can exceed.thisleadstothedevastatingstoragesystemsprawloutcomeonceagain. TheCloudServicecustomereitherseesdecliningperformanceovertimeorpaysaverysteepprice forbetterperformancethateventuallystilldeclinesovertime.neitherisacceptableandeitherlimits theserviceproviders marketgrowthordestroystheirbusinessmodel. 3. Objects Objects are often the least understood aspect of Cloud Services storage scalability or lack thereof. Thenumberofobjects(files,blocks,ordatablobs)astoragesystemcanmanageisconstrainedbyan inflexiblestoragefilesystem.thefilesystemutilizesadatabasetokeeptrackofdata,metadata,and index,whichareallwrittenasseparateobjects.thedatabaseisthekeylimitingfactorinthenumber ofobjectsthatcanbemanagedtypicallylimitedtothelowmillions.yetcloudservicesrequirements normally peg that requirement in the multiple billions. That s a killer discrepancy that once again leads to storage system sprawl resulting in more systems, interconnect, switches, floor space, rack space,power,cooling,aswellasalotmorecomplicatedanddifficultmanagement. CloudServicesbusinessmodelscannotsucceedbasedonthesescalabilityconstraints.Itisanessential non negotiable requirement for Cloud Service providers to start small and grow to a very large scale. StoragesystemsprawlisnotaviableoptionfortheCloudServiceprovider. Pay For Use Paradigm CloudServicesaremarketedandpurchasedasanoperatingexpense.Pricingisonaperuseand/oruser basis.cloudstorageisalsopricedthesamewayonpergbusedpermonthbasis.customers/clientsonly pay for the resources they utilize. This is a complete paradigm shift from the way legacy storage is marketedandpurchased.thecurrenttraditionalstoragemodelpricesallofthestoragerequiredovera three or four year period, plus all of the software, and even the maintenance, bundled in one up front price.inaddition,thesestoragesystemscalculatecostsonrawstorage,notusable.itisamisalignment ofmodelsliketryingtoputasquarepeginaroundhole. ThattraditionalpurchasingmodelplacesalloftheriskontheCloud Serviceproviders.Firsttheserviceprovidermustaccuratelyforecast howmuchstoragetheywillneedoveraspecifictimeframe.thisis exceedingly difficult for service providers that have a lumpy customerandrevenuestream.thentheyhavetohopetheycansell adequate services to cover the costs of their upfront storage investment.thestoragevendorssharenoneoftherisk. Thislegacymodelisincompatiblewiththego to marketstrategyof thecloudserviceprovider.itisnotnecessarilyadeathknellfortheirbusiness;however,itplacesitin significantjeopardy. DragonSlayerConsulting Q

8 Loosely Coupled Service Loosely coupled services are designed to leverage commodity components. By definition a loosely coupledservicehasnodependenciesonspecifichardwareenablingmovementorchangestransparently, easily, and without disruptions. This concept is at the core of Cloud Services. It allows the service provider to use low cost highly reliable commodity components to provide a highly resilient, high performanceservice.thatabilitytoprovideapplicationcontinuityevenashardwareisbeingupgraded, replaced,ormodifiedisoneofthekeysellingpointsforcloudservices.nouserdowntimeisthekey. Legacy storage is the antithesis to being a loosely coupled service. Data is tightly coupled to systems, volumes, file systems, drives, name spaces, etc., that creates a highly deterministic, manually laborintensiveenvironment.increasedlaborcostsarenotthecorrectrecipeforasuccessfulcloudservices business. Even worse is that the tight coupling is to high cost proprietary hardware and software that locksinthecustomerunlesstheycantoleratetheveryhighcostofmovingawayfromtheproprietary, rigidinflexiblearchitectures. This is especially unfortunate during the hardware and/or software refresh cycles. Replacing and refreshinglegacystoragesystemsareterriblyapplicationdisruptive.it salsoamajorexpensivetimesink. Thereare43distinctmanuallylabor intensivestepswithmultipletaskswithineachsteptoreplaceand migrate a SAN storage system (39 for NAS). Many of these steps, such as server remediation, are intenselyerrorprone.datacanbeandofteniscorrupted.andallofthesestepsrequirehugeamountsof time, people, coordination, cooperation, and communication. Time that s measured in months even years,nothoursordays.addinthecostofprofessionalservices,plusthestoragesystemoverlapcosts (bothstoragesystemsonthefloor,powered,andpaidforatthesametimewiththeuseofonlyone),and thefactthatthisrefreshcycletakesplaceevery3to4years,createsacostmodelthatisuntenablefor CloudServices. Transparent Data Resilience The trade press and Internet have numerous headline grabbing stories about Cloud Service outages or breeches.theseheadlinesarealwaysfollowedbyspeculativeblogsaboutwhetherornotcloudservices will survive. This is a common occurrence and standard operating procedure for all paradigm shifting technologies.itoccurredwithsanstorage,nas,theworld Wide Web,andnowCloudServices. AllITsystemsfail.Whentheyfailinaprivatedatacenterwithlimitedvisibilitytotheoutsideworld,there are no headlines. Private data center system outages and security breaches occur far more frequently than is common knowledge and far less frequently than public Cloud Services. Market perception historicallylagstechnicalreality.nevertheless,cloudserviceprovidersstrivetomitigateoreliminateany outagesorsecuritybreachesbecauseinthemarketperceptionisreality.asimpleinternetsearchonthe rootcauseofmanyoftheseverypublicfailuresshowshumanerrorastheprimarycause.examplesof these errors include a misconfiguration, inappropriate parameter setting, false assumption, incorrect policy, and more. These are manually labor intensive tasks. These are exactly the same kinds of tasks thataresoprevalentwithlegacystoragesystems. It is incredibly difficult for Cloud Service providers to minimize outages and security breaches when utilizinglegacystorage.legacystorageincreasesopportunitiesfortheseoutagesandsecuritybreaches becauseoftheincreasepotentialofhumanerror. CloudServicesrequiretransparentdataresiliency(nonoticeabledeclinesinperformanceoraccess)tothe customerdataavailabilityevenwhendataislost,corrupted,ordestroyedforwhateverreason. DragonSlayerConsulting Q

9 Onceagainlegacystorageistheweakinflexiblelink. Simple to Implement, Operate, and Manage Putting storage expertise into the storage system instead of the administrator reduces workloads, tasks, errors, time, expense, and people.assensibleasthismaybe,itisahardandfastrequirementfor CloudServices.Leanandflexibleisthenameofthegamewhenitcomes tocloudservices. Legacy storage systems have historically been anything but simple or intuitive. They are getting better. Driven by customers that lack the expertisethatwasexpectedinthepast,thesesystemshaveoverlaidmultiplelayersofmanagementand functionalitytosimplifyimplementations,operations,andmanagement.however,theselayersarelikea Russian Matryoshka or Babushka doll (Russian nesting doll) when it comes to making changes. To be simple means to keep it simple or static. Dynamic changes are often challenging and difficult, if at all possible, require extensive expertise and/or expensive professional services, and do not happen in real time. Cloud Services are never static. Put bluntly, legacy storage systems cannot meet Cloud Services requirements. Real World Work Arounds and Why They re Inadequate It shumannatureupondiscoveringdifficultproblemstofigureoutasolutionorwork around.andthere are a number of common workarounds that Cloud Services storage admins attempt to implement with thelegacystorageproblem. Formulti tenantbillingtheytryutilizing thirdpartysoftware orwritetheirownscripts.butaspointed outpreviously,theseeffortsoftenfailinaseaoffrustrationfromlackofongoingqa,documentationand theirinherentinflexibility. Another work around for multi tenant security is drive encryption. Drive encryption does not prevent differentcustomersorservicesfromhavingaccesstothedrive.itonlymeansdatawrittentothedriveis encrypted at rest. If the drive or drives are accessible through the storage system, the data can be accessed. Theusualworkaroundsforcapacityscalingissues,andtolesserextentsobjectscalingandperformance scaling,istogotoastoragesystemssprawlschemeorscaleout.aspreviouslydiscussed,storagesystem sprawlisanon starterforcloudserviceproviders.scale outstorage,especiallyscale outnas,havebeen gaininginpopularity;however,scale outstoragehasitsissues.first,eachadditionalnodeinthecluster hasdiminishingmarginalreturnsmeaningthecapacity,performance,andobjectgainsarelessthanthe node before. Eventually, additional nodes reduce scalability. Capacity typically tops out in low double digitpbs,acoupleofordersofmagnitudetoolow.objectsarestillanissuetypicallytoppingoffindozens of millions, not billions. And the total cost of ownership is still too high for ultimate Cloud Service providersuccess. The workarounds for performance scaling also include utilization of FLASH SSD as cache or as Tier 0 storagetiersandhddshort strokingasacheaperalternative.theseworkaroundsdoscaleperformance withinthelimitationsofthestoragesystemataverysteeppricemakingthepriceperformancetoohigh forcloudservicesproviderstobecostcompetitive. DragonSlayerConsulting Q

10 A common pay per use paradigm work around is to lease. Leasing turns all that upfront CapEx into a monthly payment. It does not reduce risk and in fact ultimately costs more. Leasing has multiple components:theresidualvalueofthestoragesystemattheendoftheleaseperiod;theamounttobe financed(differencebetweensalepriceandresidual);theinterestontheresidualvalueduringthelease period; fees for leasing; and the potential penalties for running long on the lease because of data migrationtimeframeissues.leasingisnotagoodalternativetopay per use. Tolimitthenegativelegacystoragesystemtightcouplingimpactmanystorageadminsimplementserver virtualizationwithastoragevirtualizationlayer.thisallowsabitmoreflexibilitybylooseningthebonds between the application and the data. It does so at a very steep cost that requires duplicate identical storage systems, multiple copies of the data on tier 1 expensive storage, and redundant supporting infrastructure. Workingaroundthetransparentdataresilienceissuesismorecomplicatedandmoreexpensive.Itcomes down to copy and replicate with multiple copies of the data on multiple legacy storage systems. But creating the transparency to the multiple copies is a bit more difficult. When data is lost, corrupted, misplaced or deleted, the alternative copy or copies must be mounted on the application (NAS) file systemorpointedtothecorrectlun(sanordas).botharemanuallabor intensivetasksandfarfrom transparent.acostlyexerciseintime,people,infrastructure,andstoragecosts. Managing around legacy storage system complexity usually means homegrown scripts that are rarely documented;qa d;updated;orkeptupwithongoingsystemchanges.theytendtobeinflexiblewitha limitedshelflife.aspersonnelleavetheyhavetobecompletelyrewritten. TherehastobeabetterwaytomeetCloudServicestoragerequirementswithoutmortgagingthefuture. Thereis.It scalledscality Organic storage. Organic Storage Meets or Exceeds Requirements OrganicStorageislivingstorage.Itmimicsthewaylifeadaptstoaconstantlychanginganalogworld.It s a loosely couple grid of self contained nodes each with shared processing, IO, and storage. Nodes are interconnected on a TCP/IP Ethernet network allowing equal access and allocation of resources on demand.byleveragingobjectstorage(blocksorfilesstoredwiththeirmetadataandindexasasingle object),organicstorageisabletoscaletounprecedentedamountsofcapacity(hundredsofpetabytesto exabytes), objects (many billions), and performance (tens to hundreds of millions of IOPS). Organic StoragehasnumeroussignificantadvantagestoCloudServiceproviders.Someadvantagesinclude: Built inmulti tenancyandsecurity. Adaptsinreal timetochangingdemands,loads,andperformance. Distributesovermanyindependentcommodity,off the shelfcommoditycomponents. Selfhealsatextraordinarynewlevelsofresiliencythathandlesfailuresfromanycomponentor multiple components with no material impact on performance, functionality, or availability becausetheorganicstoragesoftwareislooselycoupledwiththehardware. Scalescapacity,objects,and/orperformanceinsmallorlargeincrementswithoutlimitations. Addsadditionalnodesonlinethatalwayspositivelyincreasecapacityandperformancewithout everstoppingthesystem. Apay per uselicensingparadigm.licensedonutilizedstorageonapermonthbasissharingthe riskwiththecloudserviceprovider. Refreshes storage in a manner analogous to the way organic systems replace their cells: Continuously,progressively,transparently,withoutapplicationdisruption. DragonSlayerConsulting Q

11 ThismakesOrganicStorageidealforCloudServicesproviders.Itistheonlytypeofstoragethatmeetsor exceedsallcloudserviceoperationalandfinancialrequirements. Scality RING: The Leading Organic Storage System Scality RING was architected from the ground up to be Organic Storage and exceed Cloud Service requirements.itisanalogoustoanorganicautonomicnervoussystemactivelyandadaptivelymanaging thewhat,where,when,why,andhowofstorageandretrievalwithouthuman(conscious)intervention. Scality Ring leverages its unique industry hardened peer to peer technology to provide carrier grade serviceavailabilityanddatareliability. RING Organic Storage is made up of standard off the shelf commodityservernodes.eachnodeontheringisresponsiblefor its own piece of the overall storage puzzle. Every node is functionallyequivalent.anodecanfail,beremoved,upgraded,or just new ones added and the system will rebalance automatically without human intervention. This makes technology refresh a simple, online process with no application disruptions eliminating datamigration,longnights,andsleeplessweekends. Therearenorequirementsforamasterdatabaseordirectory.The Ring utilizes instead an incredibly efficient Distributed Hash Table (DHT)algorithmthatconsistentlymapsaparticularkeytoasetof storagenodes.dhtsprovidethelookupservicesimilartoahashtable.key,valuepairsarestoredinthe DHT that any and all participating node retrieve the value associated with a given key. Keys embed information about Class Of Service.Each node is autonomous and responsible for checking consistency andrebuildingreplicasautomaticallyforitskeys.responsibilityformaintainingthemappingfromkeysto values is distributed among the nodes, in such a way that a change in the set of participants causes a minimal amount of disruption. This allows DHTs to scale to extremely large numbers of nodes and to handlecontinualnodearrivals,departures,andfailures. The DHT decentralization is the key to consistent performance that scales linearly. The nodes collectivelyformthesystemwithout any central coordination, bottlenecks, or single points of failure. This provides performance thatrivalsthefastestsans(without any SAN complexity or cost) even though the applications interconnect to the RING are the very simple standardized REST. Loads are always evenly distributed and balanced between nodes. DHT decentralization also enables unrivaled capacity and object scalability. RING scales from dozens to thousandsofnodes,tensofpetabytestoexabytes,andbillionsofobjects. DragonSlayerConsulting Q

12 RING sdhtcomeswithunsurpassedbuilt insystemdataresiliencesimilartoanorganicimmunesystem. Everynodeconstantlymonitorsalimitednumberofitspeers,and automatically rebalances replicas and load to make the system completely autonomically self healing without human intervention. Consistent hashing guarantees that only a small subsetofkeysiseveraffectedbyanodefailureorremoval.the result is a very high level of fault tolerance because the system stays reliable even with nodes continuously joining, leaving, or failing. Advanced key calculation algorithms allow modeling any kind of geographicallyawarereplicationdeployment.datacanbespread acrossracksordatacenterstofollowbusinesspolicieseveninthe caseofserverfailures. In addition to meeting or exceeding Cloud Service provider operationalrequirements,scalityringissoftwarethatlicenseson a pay per use model. Service providers pay on a used capacity basis, not raw. And because Scality RING utilizes standard off the shelf commodity servers obtainable fromtheserviceprovidervendorofchoice,italwaysprovidesthelowestpossibletco. Conclusion TherequirementsofCloudServicesareunique.Legacyrigiddeterministicstoragedoesnotandcannot meet these requirements. What s needed is Organic Storage that mimics the way the living adapts to ever changingconditionswhilematchingcloudserviceproviderbusinessmodels. ThatOrganicStoragesystemisScalityRING. Formoredetailedinformation,pleasecontact: sales@scality.comorgotowww.scality.com Abouttheauthor:MarcStaimeristhefounder,senioranalyst,andCDSofDragonSlayerConsultinginBeaverton,OR. Theconsultingpracticeof13yearshasfocusedintheareasofstrategicplanning,productdevelopment,andmarket development. With over 31 years of marketing, sales and business experience in infrastructure, storage, server, software, and virtualization, he s considered one of the industry s leading experts. Marc can be reached at marcstaimer@mac.com. DragonSlayerConsulting Q