Storage knowledge administration instruments: What they do and what’s obtainable
Pure Storage’s latest launch of its Enterprise Knowledge Cloud reignited debate round storage and knowledge administration.
Pure claims its EDC addresses the administration of rising volumes of information in a posh regulatory atmosphere, and the calls for storage faces from synthetic intelligence (AI) workloads.
The thought of a single administration layer for storage will not be new. Pure will not be the one provider seeking to automate storage provision and administration, the place storage is available in “fleets”, and knowledge administration and governance happen throughout native, cloud and hybrid infrastructure.
However whereas analysts agree Pure has a technical edge for now, most suppliers supply instruments that work throughout on-premise and cloud applied sciences with the intention of lowering storage administration overheads via automation and AI.
Analyst GigaOm, for instance, charges Pure Storage as a pacesetter in knowledge pipeline assist, particularly for demanding AI deployments, alongside Hitachi Vantara, HPE, IBM, NetApp and Dell Applied sciences.
“Adopting high-performance storage optimised for AI workloads is a strategic enterprise crucial, not merely a technical improve,” says Whit Walters, area chief expertise officer at GigaOm.
From storage to knowledge administration
AI’s calls for for huge quantities of information has pushed chief data officers (CIOs) and suppliers to look past technical infrastructure administration of storage, and to a wider idea of information administration.
This contains managing standard metrics, akin to capability, efficiency and availability, and routine duties akin to provisioning and backup, to points akin to knowledge location for compliance and ransomware safety.
At a fundamental degree, CIOs want to regulate all of a provider’s merchandise from a single management aircraft, from on-premise to the cloud. This contains day-to-day duties like provisioning, knowledge migration and upgrades, in addition to strong monitoring. Ideally, knowledge administration ought to combine with the provider’s as-a-service instruments, too.
However all this turns into more durable as knowledge volumes and efficiency necessities improve.
“There’s a rising problem with managing enterprise infrastructure at scale,” explains Simon Robinson, principal analyst at Enterprise Storage Group. “This isn’t a brand new downside. Infrastructure and operations groups spend an excessive amount of time instrumenting, nice tuning, provisioning and managing capability for his or her enterprise workload. Storage continues to be fairly onerous in that respect.”
Enhancements in storage administration, he says, have largely been technical, akin to skinny provisioning, and on the array degree. This makes it more durable to scale programs, and fails to account for integration with the cloud.
“Now the management aircraft wants to increase throughout the on-premise atmosphere and the general public cloud,” says Robinson. “That may be a actually troublesome downside to resolve.”
In the meantime, knowledge and storage administration instruments not often work throughout rival provider platforms. Regardless that platform-neutral storage administration has been tried, suppliers reverted to their very own instruments, with extensions into cloud environments.
The argument is that single provider instruments supply a efficiency benefit that outweighs the drawbacks.
“Going again 10 years, the aim was to persistently handle a heterogeneous vendor atmosphere,” says Robinson. “That hasn’t materialised. The commerce off with all of those approaches is that you will get the very best outcomes in the event you standardise round a selected vendor’s programs.”
Some provider choices, akin to IBM Storage Virtualize, present multi-supplier assist. However most, akin to Pure’s EDC, assume IT leaders will commerce compatibility for efficiency.
Right here, we listing some key knowledge administration options of the primary knowledge storage suppliers.
Dell Applied sciences
Dell’s PowerScale expertise offers a scale-out structure, supporting administration of native and cloud storage from the identical interface.
Dell contains knowledge administration for AI and unstructured knowledge, via DataIQ (for unstructured knowledge) and CloudIQ (for cloud).
DataIQ works throughout Dell EMC PowerScale and Isilon {hardware}, in addition to S3 appropriate cloud storage. Although Apex, Dell additionally offers a platform for multi-cloud administration, though it isn’t particular to storage.
HPE
HPE says its Alletra Storage product offers a “cloud expertise” for workloads domestically or within the cloud. Its Greenlake platform offers as-a-service storage throughout on-premise, hybrid and cloud.
Zerto affords knowledge safety throughout hybrid environments. Alongside this, HPE’s Knowledge Administration Framework 7 offers knowledge administration instruments throughout high-performance and AI storage, together with tiering and automatic file motion.
Huawei
Huawei’s knowledge administration engine (DME) offers provisioning, lifecycle administration, alerting and anomaly detection. It additionally helps multi-cloud operations, and makes use of AI to foretell system dangers, via DME IQ.
DME helps Huawei’s personal arrays and its FusionStorage, in addition to some assist for third-party {hardware} and hosts akin to ESXi.
IBM
IBM has a variety of storage and knowledge administration capabilities, break up throughout a spread of instruments. Storage Virtualize is a long-established device in a position to handle {hardware} in multi-supplier environments.
IBM Storage Insights Professional is subscription-based, and offers stock, capability and efficiency administration for IBM and non-IBM block storage.
IBM Storage Scale offers high-performance knowledge administration, whereas IBM Spectrum Management delivers monitoring and analytics throughout a number of suppliers on-premise and within the cloud.
NetApp
NetApp has a spread of storage and knowledge administration capabilities, together with via its Ontap storage working system, its StorageGrid multi-cloud expertise and its Keystone as-a-service providing.
Keystone can management storage throughout on-premise and the cloud, and contains governance, compliance and ransomware safety, in addition to deployment and administration instruments. BlueXP permits customers to regulate storage and knowledge providers throughout native and cloud programs.
Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara’s VSP One affords a single knowledge aircraft to combine knowledge and simplify administration throughout on-premise and cloud. It helps block, file and object, in addition to software-defined storage (SDS) and, unusually, assist for mainframes.
VSP One SDS can run on third-party {hardware}, in addition to on Amazon’s cloud. VSP 360 offers cloud orchestration in addition to fleet administration; Everflex offers storage-as-a-service.
Pure Storage
Enterprise Knowledge Cloud permits clients to handle knowledge throughout a “storage cloud”, whatever the location of bodily storage. This enables clients to concentrate on managing knowledge, it says.
It additionally permits any Pure array to work as an endpoint for the fleet. EDC is made up of Pure’s {hardware} layer, its cloud-based Pure1 storage administration and optimisation platform, and its Pure Fusion management aircraft for fleet administration.
