FOCUS ON THE FACTS:
SOFTWARE-DEFINED
STORAGE
Table of
Contents
CHAPTER 1: UNRAVELING
THE SDS HYPE
CHAPTER 2: CRITICAL
ATTRIBUTES OF SDS
CHAPTER 3: THE FUTURE
IS NOW
CHAPTER 4: CUTTING THE
HARDWARE CORD
CHAPTER 5: WHY RED RIVER
& HP FOR SDS?
ABOUT RED RIVER
Introduction
Today’s IT departments are under
tremendous pressure to deliver
more value at higher velocity with
fewer resources. Organizations can’t
seem to acquire or deploy more or
varied storage solutions fast enough.
Even the most engineering-intensive
hardware vendors can’t keep up
with demand. Moreover, legacy
hardware-defined storage alone
no longer meets the escalating
demands for increased capacity,
flexibility or performance.
The fact is, the storage needs of
organizations are so varied, that
they are impossible to address
with storage hardware alone. So
where does that leave businesses
and agencies clamoring for
relatively low-cost, rapidly scalable
storage that is easy to manage and
integrates seamlessly into multihypervisor data centers? They’re
looking at software-defined storage
(SDS), one of 2014’s hottest data
center trends. But just what exactly
is SDS and how can it benefit your
organization? This e-book unravels
the SDS hype and examines the
critical attributes, key business
drivers and reasons you may want to
consider cutting the hardware cord
and moving to SDS.
Read the ebook.
Chapter 1:
Unraveling
the SDS Hype
Software-Defined Storage (SDS) is
garnering a lot of attention in the
marketplace.
Like any savvy IT consumer, you may
be a bit skeptical when the industry
starts throwing around new terms
or hyping up SDS as the next big
thing and the solution to all of your
problems. Let’s take a minute to
unravel the SDS hype and see what
SDS is really about.
Software delivers expansive
capabilities that hardware-centric
approaches of the past can’t provide,
including faster development and
deployment, enhanced flexibility
and agility. So, it makes sense
to extend those across the IT
environment through software. At
its core, SDS is software applications
layered on server infrastructure.
In terms of functionality, SDS
delivers advanced data services,
like snapshots, provisioning and
multi-site disaster recovery.
SDS is also at the heart of the
Software-Defined Data Center
(SDDC) – an extension that takes
software-defined approaches to
storage and networking to their
logical endpoint. There are an array
of definitions for the SDDC, but it is
essentially the full IT infrastructure
stack built on a standard set of
platforms with common and
interoperable data services,
managed via application-aware
orchestration and open application
programming interfaces (APIs).
Media hype aside, SDS and the
SDDC provide an efficient means
of addressing the relentless demand
for the rapid deployment of IT
resources today’s organizations
require to satisfy an ever-expanding
set of demands. SDS and the SDDC
allow businesses and federal, state
and local agencies to:
•Support growth without
complexity
•Accommodate unpredictable
demand
•Provide instant access
to information
•Deliver high service levels
at acceptable costs
•Reduce and manage business risk
•Protect technology investments
Chapter 2:
Critical
Attributes of
SDS
In order for storage to be truly
software defined, it must meet three
critical attributes, all of which enable
cost optimization and maximum
flexibility within the data center:
Hardware independence:
By taking advantage of hypervisor
virtualization technologies, virtual
storage appliances (VSAs) can run
on nearly any x86-based server and
enable the redeployment of existing
legacy storage arrays. This allows
organizations to reuse older legacy
equipment and efficiently optimize
newly acquired technologies,
effectively maximizing capital
investments.
Hypervisor agnosticism:
Eliminating hypervisor technology
lock-in translates to long-term
investment protection. True SDS
allows an organization to employ
common management and data
services across multiple hypervisors
(VMware, Hyper-V, Kernel-based
Virtual Machine [KVM]) at one
time, and also provides options
to seamlessly change hypervisor
infrastructures at a later time should
IT or business requirements change.
Scale-out data services
architecture: Over time, storage
needs inevitably expand. Federation
and autonomic management
prevent organizations from being
restricted to isolated data storage
towers that do not interact well
with the rest of their IT environment
and free staff from managementintensive storage tasks. Scale-out
data services provide a nondisruptive response to constantly
changing demands as well as
non-disruptive capacity growth.
These three critical attributes
provide a compelling foundation for
transitioning to SDS. With true SDS
implementations, organizations are
no longer locked into any particular
storage hardware or hypervisor.
Organizations can mix and match
their virtualization environments
as easily as they mix hardware. SDS
allows organizations to create open
pools of shared storage capacity
with whatever standards-based
hardware they currently have or may
acquire and still respond quickly
to changing business demands in
multi-hypervisor environments.
Chapter 3:
The Future
is Now
SDS is not some far off, radical
technology that you’ll be
experiencing in the distant future.
For SDS, the future is now. Several
factors are driving demand for SDS,
including the growing need for IT
efficiency, flexibility and choice.
Plus, technical trends, such as
virtualization, cloud computing,
Big Data and mobility are also
coming together to create an ideal
alignment of business needs and
IT that make now the perfect time
for SDS. These factors include:
Increased server power: Single-CPU
servers could efficiently handle the
management of one or, at most,
a few virtual machines. However,
performance was often slow or
unreliable compared to those same
servers running directly as dedicated
systems. Today’s more powerful
servers have multiple processors
to deliver robust platforms that can
easily support the performance
needs of both virtual applications
and virtual storage appliances
co-resident on the same system.
Rising adoption of solid state
drives: As flash-based media has
continued to drop in price, the
increase in disk performance
and capacity of solid state drives
(SSDs), hybrid SSD and hard disk
drive (HDD) combinations, makes
it possible for software-defined
storage to perform as well or better
than conventional HDD storage
in terms of both Input/Output
Operations per Second (IOPS)
and dollar per IOPS.
Widespread adoption of
virtualization: Server virtualization
has created demand for highly
available, flexible shared
storage. Widespread adoption of
virtualization is also driving demand
for greater storage efficiencies,
and points to the ability to apply
virtualization concepts to storage
in order to achieve this. However,
storage must be open and flexible,
with the ability to support multihypervisor and cloud environments.
Chapter 4:
Cutting the
Hardware
Cord
The real power of SDS lies in
separating out hardware and
data services from management
and control, thus bringing new
value through maximum cost
optimization, flexibility and
opportunities for orchestration
across the SDDC.
In short, SDS allows organizations
to create an open pool of shared
storage capacity from whatever
standards-based hardware they
currently have (or will acquire) then
use standards-based APIs to drive
orchestration between storage
resources and other aspects of the
data center.
This approach gives organizations
the freedom to repurpose existing
server and storage hardware
(or purchase newer commodity
hardware) without being tied
to a specific supplier. Perhaps
more importantly, it opens up
new possibilities for simplified
management and orchestration
across the data center -- for
example, by enabling OpenStack
development for hybrid cloud
integration.
By eliminating hardware
dependency in the physical layer,
IT can still deliver advanced data
services – including disaster
recovery, replication, thin
provisioning, deduplication and
more – while benefiting from
the cost advantages it gets from
the use of commodity hardware.
By decoupling hardware from
management, new possibilities
open up for orchestration and cloud
integration.
Chapter 5:
Why HP &
Red River
for SDS?
Why trust storage, a fundamental
building block of the SDDC, with
a server virtualization software
company or an unproven new
entrant in the market?
HP has been a player in SDS and
the SDDC since inception and is the
only vendor capable of delivering
on all elements of the SDDC –
compute, networking, storage and
management – offering a complete
SDS strategy and vision based on
simplicity, efficiency and openness
that make storage availability a top
priority.
Red River is a longstanding HP
Partner with a forward-thinking
storage practice and strong
understanding of SDS. We know
exactly what it takes to transition
businesses and public sector
agencies to this proven storage
architecture for the softwaredefined data center. Let Red River
identify the right SDS options for
your infrastructure and show you
how to leverage SDS to lower
costs, increase storage capacity
and simplify management and
maintenance. Contact us to learn
more about SDS today.
About
Red River
Red River is an IT hardware integrator committed to
helping customers optimize business processes and
maximize the value of IT investments. Widely regarded
for our special focus on the U.S. government, Red River
has developed a remarkable reputation for delivering
IT products and hardware-related services to military and
civilian agencies and the companies that serve them.
Our core values of hard work and honesty fuel our central
mission to make IT personal.
Learn more at www.redriver.com.
RED RIVER
CORPORATE
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