ESG Brief Software-­‐defined Storage: Simplifying IT Operations Date: January, 2015 Author: Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst Abstract: No matter how advanced data centers may become, they remain in a perpetual state of change in order to meet the demands of virtualized environments. But with the advent of software-­‐defined storage (SDS) architecture, capabilities associated with hyperconverged technologies (including compute, storage, and networking), help data centers meet virtualization requirements with less administrator intervention at webscale. This flexible, scale-­‐out, and highly automated architecture provides enterprise-­‐class data services for each workload, supplying the appropriate levels of capacity, performance, and protection while containing costs and bringing agility and efficiency to the data center by simplifying management, reducing reconfigurations, and improving TCO. Overview Today’s data centers have evolved into converged IT infrastructures, supporting sophisticated systems in which storage, compute, and networking are integrated. Fortunately for IT and users alike, data centers have overcome some of the previous challenges to which they have been subject, including proprietary, independent server, storage, and networking silos that underutilized resources and spawned inefficient IT operations. The implementation of virtualization has dramatically improved these issues from a server virtualization perspective. Optimizing hardware utilization allows IT to manage the data center more efficiently, which, in turn, helps contain costs. In fact, ESG has witnessed infrastructure utilization rates skyrocket from single digits well into the 50 to 60 percent plus range. Ultimately, though, it’s not just about the server level being virtualized. The virtualization of storage and networking components, in addition to the server, deliver a complete software-­‐defined data center (SDDC). The SDDC is where gains in agility and efficiency necessary for business competitiveness are realized (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Transitioning Traditional IT to New IT Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2015. A software-­‐defined solution is one that decouples policy control from the hardware substrate. Rather than being “baked” into specialized hardware, intelligence is abstracted into a distributed software layer for programmatic, policy-­‐
based control and simpler centralized management. Essentially, using a software-­‐defined solution, standardized hardware, and simplified management help contain IT budgets. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ESG Brief: Software-­‐defined Storage: Simplifying IT Operations 2 Today’s data centers have evolved into converged IT infrastructures, supporting sophisticated, flexible, automated systems built on open standards to quickly adapt to the changing needs of the business, and cost-­‐effectively scale-­‐up, -­‐
down, or -­‐out as workloads and budgets dictate. Figure 2. Software-­‐defined storage Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2015. Traditional hardware-­‐defined storage has long been seen as an IT infrastructure budgetary black hole, owing its domination to prohibitively expensive hardware arrays—flash drives, disks, and controllers. All of these systems are independent silos based on performance, and must be managed, maintained, and even procured separately. They have been built with custom hardware, ASICs and firmware, and managed by proprietary tools that call for specialized skill sets, training, and certification. Software-­‐defined storage (SDS) is an emerging paradigm that works across traditional silos (see Figure 2). With SDS: •
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Storage can be programmed in real time to provide enterprise-­‐class data services for each workload, based on policies. Policies set the appropriate capacity, performance, availability, and data protection, and associate them with the appropriate storage tier. The hardware layer consists of building blocks of standard servers with flash and hard disk drives, which are combined into a single pool of storage by the software layer. In essence, SDS is a flexible, scalable, and highly automated architecture suitable for dynamic workloads in modern data centers. SDS delivers increased flexibility, improved agility, and superior economics over traditional storage solutions whose feature sets are tightly coupled to hardware. Top Five Reasons to Select an SDS Vendor The vendor can supply: •
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Optimized hardware configurations for compute-­‐ and storage-­‐heavy workloads with multiple storage tiers and policies that drive data to their ultimate destinations. Compute-­‐heavy workload data utilizes high performance tiers—e.g., flash—while infrequently accessed workload data is moved to longer-­‐term storage—e.g., high-­‐capacity disk storage. Multiple hypervisor support for users who want to leverage SDS systems for both legacy hypervisors and future diverse environments such as KVM-­‐based, open-­‐source hypervisors. Application solution bundles based on a simple, turnkey appliance approach that can be turned up very quickly; and well-­‐documented, vendor-­‐certified reference architectures for more complex applications. End-­‐to-­‐end monitoring and management with a single pane of glass that allows IT to monitor and tune server, storage, and networking components without having to work with multiple tools. This also enables them to troubleshoot, perform multiple tasks, and conduct capacity planning without involving the many different disciplines within IT. Global service and support for the entire virtualization stack with worldwide reach, extensive troubleshooting experience and knowledge, and the ability to forecast mean time to resolution. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ESG Brief: Software-­‐defined Storage: Simplifying IT Operations 3 The Bigger Truth Powered by Nutanix software, the Dell XC 720XD Web-­‐Scale Converged Appliance meets the needs of modern data centers by consolidating software-­‐defined compute and storage into a single chassis that integrates easily into any data center, and is able to employ multiple virtualized, business-­‐critical workloads. Users can grow incrementally with pay-­‐as-­‐
you-­‐grow, scale-­‐out expansion without constraints, thus increasing capacity and performance one node at a time to meet future needs without overprovisioning. Additionally, the Dell XC 720XD eliminates the complexity and performance drag of storage networks by delivering data I/O with low latency. Dell also offers storage solutions from VMware, Nexenta, Microsoft, and Red Hat. All of these capabilities from Dell should bode well for organizations that appreciate the value of optimizing data center assets to reduce expenses, simplify IT operations, and achieve business agility. This ESG Brief was commissioned by Dell and is distributed under license from ESG. All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-­‐copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at 508.482.0188. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.