Monday, October 5, 2009

Veritas FileStore provides a new storage platform for delivering storage services. This can be for cloud service or cloud storage providers that need to provide a NAS front end to their infrastructure, or for private clouds within standard IT organizations. Finally, it can also serve as a high-performance NAS for environments that have applications with demanding NAS I/O requirements.

The challenge faced by many NAS implementations, whether they support cloud based services or high internal demand I/O workloads, is that the classic dual controller architecture often can't scale to meet those demands. The customer is faced with having to either replace those NAS controllers with faster (more expensive) ones or buy additional NAS heads, leading to additional storage management headaches. The answer to these problems seems to be clustered NAS storage.

There are many variations of clustered NAS storage. FileStore achieves its clustered NAS through a series of NAS computer nodes based on customer supplied Intel based servers, all with the ability to access the same file system at the same time. This brings with it a more scalable, and what is potentially more important, predictable performance model that enterprise-class cloud storage environments will need. Since all nodes have simultaneous access to the same file system, adding an additional node means additional performance without having to manually redistribute the data, something other clustered NAS implementations require.

Leveraging their lineage in clustered file systems gives Symantec the ability to have a completely active-active design. This means every node in the cluster participates in delivering data. This cluster design also means that nodes can be added non-disruptively and that the storage I/O workload is redistributed across all the nodes dynamically. Finally the Symantec FileStore design means fast failover when you lose a node.

Architecturally, the FileStore nodes are standard, Intel based servers on which the FileStore software is loaded. There can be, for now, up to 16 nodes in the cluster. Those nodes then attach via Fibre Channel or iSCSI (2 node limit) to customer supplied storage. The users accessing this storage, either locally or via a private or public cloud, see the FileStore cluster as a CIFS, NFS, HTTP or FTP mount point.

Included with FileStore are capabilities like dynamic storage tiering which will reposition files on Solid State Disk (SSD), Fibre, SAS or SATA drives, based on file attributes. For example, a heavily accessed file could be automatically moved to SSD for maximum performance. Then, as the file ages and interest declines, it could migrate down to Fibre and then to SATA drives for maximum cost efficiency. This level of automation is critical for providers and organizations to fully leverage SSD in their environments. Moreover, this dynamic file placement doesn’t require application changes and end-users still access the same directory structure regardless of the storage tiers.

For data protection customers can use the integrated NetBackup media server. While NDMP is also supported, the NetBackup agent will provide higher performance and simpler administration for existing NetBackup environments.

Also integrated is Symantec Endpoint Protection. This allows you to run Symantec Endpoint Protection on a FileStore node (similar to NBU), there’s no additional server/storage pool necessary. This allows you to do native virus scanning within the FileStore infrastructure, saving the time required by external CIFS mounts.

Storage Switzerland's Take

This is not another "me too" cloud storage offering, with a large vendor trying to capitalize on the hype around cloud. FileStore addresses cloud storage issues in a unique fashion by delivering a scalable, high-performance NAS option to service providers.

The performance aspect of cloud architectures is often a forgotten part of the discussion. While there are environments where performance is less of an issue, for many, even in public cloud implementations, thousands of simultaneous users all accessing the same files demands high performance storage.

Symantec FileStore is a high performance cloud NAS solution that provides the storage I/O that many cloud service providers need. Delivered as software, they also give those providers the flexibility to obtain that performance as well as the ability to scale performance and capacity independently while containing costs.

Move out of the public cloud use-case and FileStore becomes even more interesting. Internal clouds or private clouds are not limited by internet connection speeds like public clouds are, because they typically at local LAN speed. In most cases this means 1GBE and potentially 10GBE. Storage I/O can quickly become an issue in these environments. The scaling offered by FileStore not only makes it a strong consideration in this environment but also in traditional NAS implementations where performance is an issue.

FileStore coupled with the right combination of storage systems could give providers and IT departments a unique competitive edge and is worthy of immediate consideration.

George Crump, Senior Analyst