What is Software-defined Storage and what makes StoneFly’s SCVM the best one?
Monolithic solutions have had their day and now their capabilities are limited to small scale data requirements. For instance, a Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliance will do just fine for a Small to mid-sized business (SMB) but once that SMB starts encountering big data; the appliance will display its shortcomings. However, a NAS appliance with cloud connect services can effectively address enterprise data requirements. That is a different discussion altogether. What I wish to discuss in this article is Software-defined Storage (SDS).
Defining Software Defined Storage (SDS)
Software defined storage basically means a software that manages data storage resources and is independent of the underlying physical storage hardware. This is the simpler version.
Some experts say that any data storage product can be referred to as software defined. That’s because all storage products, whether NAS or SAN (Storage Area Network), require a software to manage the associated resources and perform storage related tasks.
That’s two definitions associated with SDS but there’s also a third one and that’s how the market interprets it.
The marketing term SDS is related to software products that are developed to run on server hardware with Intel x86 processors and to allow cost reductions over traditional SAN and NAS systems; coupled with hardware and software.
One SDS that delivers: Scalability, Cost Effectiveness, Cloud Connect Services and Multi-cloud Solutions
As unstructured data grew explosively, service providers focused more on SDS development. This continuous pursuit of innovation led to a certain software that I wish to mention here: StoneFly’s SCVM (Storage Concentrator Virtual Machine).
There’s a whole range of data services that this SDS delivers, like Snapshots, Remote Geo-replication, Cloud connect to Microsoft Azure and AWS (Amazon Web Services), Asynchronous or synchronous campus mirroring, volume encryption, tiering, erasure coding, deduplication, thin provisioning and much much more.
SCVMTM is very flexible and unique because it can be installed on physical servers, on VMware and Hyper-V environments and it can be installed on the cloud as well. You can setup your NAS in the cloud or a SAN in the cloud (yes, that’s cloud block storage); or you can setup a SAN plus NAS in the cloud. Isn’t that amazing?
One really fun feature that I’d like to mention here is that you can upgrade your legacy infrastructure with this SDS. Let’s say you have an infrastructure and you’ve been using it for a while now. It’s your battle tested and reliable data storage appliance and you don’t want to let it go. It has performed in every scenario but now you need to use the cloud and since it’s an old one, it doesn’t come with cloud connect services. The choice that you’re going to get with most service providers is that you have to say good-bye to this appliance. With SCVM, you get a different choice. You can integrate the SDS with your storage appliance and get cloud connect to AWS, Azure and other private and public clouds. So you keep your preferred appliance and you simply gain more features at minimal costs.
That’s not the entire list of SCVM’s features and there’s a lot more. You can find out in detail if you hit up StoneFly’s website and schedule a demo. If you get lucky, you might land a free trial for the SDS too and then you can get a taste for yourself.
