Use Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization as a Bridge to the Cloud

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G00214958

Use Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization as a

Bridge to the Cloud

Published: 12 August 2011 Analyst(s): Gene Ruth

Data center operators who are interested in private cloud storage

technologies struggle with moving existing storage infrastructure into a

cloud storage paradigm. Heterogeneous storage virtualization appliances

offer a transition path for operators by preserving their investments and

adding cloud operating semantics.

Key Findings

■ _{Quick and easy transitions from an existing storage infrastructure to optimum cloud capable}

equipment and software are not feasible for most large IT organizations facing budgetary and staffing challenges.

■ _{The cloud storage industry is on a steep innovation curve that can quickly obsolete early private}

cloud storage adopters, leaving them with inefficient cloud storage implementations in just a few years.

■ _{Heterogeneous storage virtualization devices can consolidate a diverse storage infrastructure}

around a common access, management and provisioning point, and offer a bridge from traditional storage infrastructures to a private cloud storage environment.

Recommendations

■ _{Consider heterogeneous storage virtualization for transitioning a traditional storage}

infrastructure to a cloud storage paradigm.

■ _{Integrate user management, provisioning and cloud portal software to complete a cloud}

environment, since heterogeneous storage virtualization appliances do not cover all that is needed to complete a storage cloud infrastructure.

■ _{Use network attached storage front ends and cloud portal software to provide Internet (e.g.,}

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Analysis

Cloud storage technologies, and the operational paradigms they offer, are appealing to data centers due to the technology's intersection with an IT organization's desire to improve storage utilization, handle growing data capacity and deliver reliable data services. Unfortunately, limited budgets and existing equipment and software investments can frustrate data center operators as they attempt to achieve the ideal private cloud storage infrastructure. Most data center operations cannot simply abandon their existing infrastructures, nor do they have the "greenfield" luxury to build a new storage ecology using cloud concepts and technology from the start. Even for those that do, cloud storage technologies, concepts and product offerings are changing at a rapid pace and can quickly obsolete today's cloud implementations.

Although data centers covet the advantages of a cloud storage environment, how to proceed can be perplexing, given the baggage of limited budgets and staffing, and the demands of a

continuously available storage environment. Simply acquiring new equipment is not the answer, since the new equipment is likely to create islands of storage and will require its own operational paradigm, which runs counter to the ease and simplified operational model offered by cloud storage technologies.

This research describes the role that heterogeneous storage virtualization can play in a storage infrastructure as IT organization aspire to the cloud paradigm. The analysis identifies:

■ _{The expectations for cloud storage}

■ _{The reality of an existing storage infrastructure} ■ _{How heterogeneous storage virtualization can help} ■ _{Some caveats}

Cloud Storage Expectations

The IT storage environments that can benefit the most from cloud technologies are often large and complex infrastructures that provide diverse services, including data protection, archive functions, and varied primary data that includes block and file protocols. Server virtualization often places the primary demand on such a storage environment; and server virtualization introduces a challenging expectation for data mobility, and a "bottomless" pit of storage capacity and performance.

To deal with this complexity, data center operators expect that transitioning to a cloud paradigm will improve the effectiveness of their investments and increase their ability to meet challenging service requirements. Convincing a data center of the value of cloud storage thus requires meeting

expectations that include:

■ _{Reduction in staffing requirements through simplified management and provisioning by using a}

unified administration suite designed to allow self-service (whether by a user or lightly trained administrator)

■ _{Improved service delivery through a virtualized environment that delivers reliable storage}

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■ _{Environmental agility that is responsive to changes in demand for performance and capacity, or}

services that can vary from high transaction databases to mundane user-file shares

■ _{Improvement in business continuity deliverables across locations and workloads}

■ _{Improved financial tracking using a consumption-based environment that provides at least}

show-back, if not chargeback, capabilities

Dealing With Reality

Meeting traditional storage challenges drives storage architects toward high-performance, expensive and highly abstracted storage offerings from a variety of vendors. For example, in a single data center, multiple high-end storage arrays may be present to service diverse storage demands that include multivendor procurement policies and high data availability. For example, the arrays can range from the IBM DS8000 series to NetApp FAS systems and EMC VNX arrays. Because of the diversity of these arrays, the storage administration team must often manage them individually, potentially under a common storage resource management (SRM) umbrella, and at the expense of misaligning procedures with a cloud paradigm across the entire environment.

Thus, existing storage implementations can stymie a move to a cloud storage paradigm due to the infrastructure's complexity and cost. Simply abandoning an existing infrastructure is not an option for most organizations because of the investments they've made.

Heterogeneous storage virtualization can help in such situations by bridging an existing

infrastructure to a consolidated cloud-like environment. Storage virtualization does not address all issues, but it can provide a "good enough" solution and enable a migration path to an efficient cloud storage environment without requiring a forklift replacement of storage infrastructure.

How Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization Can Help

Heterogeneous storage virtualization provides a consolidation point for a storage infrastructure. The virtualization device consolidates a collection of disk arrays that may be from different vendors, and be different models from those vendors. The device virtualizes the volumes (e.g., logical unit

numbers [LUNs]) presented by individual arrays, and, thus, appear to users as emanating from the heterogeneous storage virtualization device. In addition, the device configures volume-to-server mapping and LUN provisioning, and adds other advanced storage capabilities. Individual disk arrays still require initial configuration from their own element managers — and thus initial setup can be complex. However, once disk arrays are established, routine management activities rally around the virtualization device. Provisioning activities, storage efficiency features (e.g., auto-tiering), monitoring and reporting all center on the device and eliminate the need for routine operations on individual disk arrays.

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heterogeneous storage virtualization devices is limited. Example vendors offering products include IBM, NetApp, EMC, Dot Hill, F5 and Huawei. Each vendor offers support for a specific set of third-party equipment, and thus each vendor requires evaluation before its products can be considered for an acquisition.

Figure 1 illustrates an example environment that provides private cloud capabilities. The large circle envelopes a virtualized storage environment that includes a heterogeneous storage virtualization appliance (i.e., device), a storage area network (SAN) and two third-party disk arrays. The appliance consolidates the disk arrays to provide virtualized volumes to an upstream server virtualization environment. A SAN connects the servers with the heterogeneous storage virtualization appliance. In addition, a cloud storage portal provides an example of a device that translates SAN protocols (e.g., SCSI) to Internet protocols over an Internet connection.

Figure 1. Private Cloud Storage Environment Using Storage Virtualization

Server zone SAN

Internet protocols: REST, WebDav, NAS

Storage zone SAN Storage for cloud environment Server virtualization environment Cloud storage portal and provisioning Virtualized volumes Heterogeneous storage virtualized appliance Disk array Functional virtualization (thin-provisioning auto-tier, RAID, etc.) Functional virtualization (thin-provisioning auto-tier, RAID, etc.) Disk array Functional virtualization (thin-provisioning auto-tier, RAID, etc.)

Source: Gartner (August 2011)

As shown in the figure, the environment aligns with cloud storage expectations in the following ways:

■ _{Consolidated provisioning point — The appliance offers aggregation of existing disk arrays}

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end user, storage maps from the virtualization device as virtual volumes make the individual disk arrays invisible to end users.

■ _{Storage efficiency — The heterogeneous storage virtualization appliance offers advanced}

features that include functional virtualization, such as thin-provisioning, pooling, auto-tiering, copy services and solid-state drive (SSD) support.

■ _{Capacity agility — The heterogeneous storage virtualization appliance enables equipment}

migrations by masking individual disk arrays. As the demand for capacity increases or individual arrays reach end of life, the appliance provides the opportunity to mask data migrations

between arrays.

■ _{Improved quality of service — Because a virtualization appliance can homogenize a storage}

infrastructure, operators can achieve consistent and predictable QoS by using a unified management paradigm and relying on the clustering capabilities of the appliance to mask hardware faults.

■ _{Standardized implementation — The heterogeneous storage virtualization appliance provides}

a standard set of hardware, management tools and services, and isolates itself from the virtualized disk arrays. This provides operators with a common set of capabilities and freedom to replace back-end disk arrays to their best advantage, assuming the heterogeneous storage virtualization appliance has them on its support list.

■ _{External cloud connectivity — As heterogeneous storage virtualization features evolve, expect}

vendors to offer gateway capabilities to external cloud storage service providers. This capability can offer spillover support to handle peak capacity demands, or to offload archive or backup data.

Some Caveats

A heterogeneous storage virtualization environment, unfortunately, does not provide all the cloud storage characteristics that an IT organization expects, and thus cannot fully implement a private cloud storage environment. A complete cloud environment requires organizations to seek third-party vendor products to fill in the gaps that heterogeneous storage virtualization cannot address. The missing gaps include:

■ _{Protocol translation to Internet protocols (e.g., REST) from SAN protocols}

■ _{Self-service user portal for provisioning storage services, user management and account}

tracking

■ _{Integration with cloud compute capacity management and compute provisioning schemes} ■ _{Charge and show-back capabilities as part of the heterogeneous storage virtualization}

administration suite

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In addition, compared with a greenfield environment, the heterogeneous storage virtualization cloud solution is not likely to provide the optimum solution as it trades off an existing storage investment for a new, fully capable purpose-built cloud infrastructure. As organizations make the transition to cloud storage infrastructures, they are likely to experience continued budget pressures that will ultimately encourage a cloud storage implementation using specifically tailored cloud solutions. Because of this pressure, organizations should consider using heterogeneous storage virtualization technology as an enabler and means to transition into a fully optimized cloud storage environment. Finally, a heterogeneous storage virtualization device will act as a Trojan horse for the incumbent vendor. Once the device is in an account and aggregating third-party disk arrays, the

heterogeneous storage virtualization vendor will have an opportunity to offer its own (hopefully more efficient) cloud storage infrastructure that will likely be based on a similar management toolset and administration paradigm. Although transitioning to a more-efficient infrastructure with the same vendor while maintaining a common toolset can be an advantage, it will limit options for competitive bids from vendors with alternative solutions.

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Use Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization as a Bridge to the Cloud