Object Storage Fundamentals 5/18/2016 Clayton Hicklin Director of Business Innovation Huber & Associates, Inc.

Agenda  What is object storage?  What is an object?  What is metadata?  The value of metadata  A bridge to big data  Example applications  How To Test

What is object storage? AGGREGATE, MANAGE, PROTECT AND USE CONTENT  Just like we move photos from devices to a PC… ‒ Simplify management and use ‒ Organize, protect and share photos  IT uses object stores for similar reasons ‒ Consolidate and organize ‒ Protect and preserve ‒ Manage and search

Comparison To Block Storage  Bucket of bits  No meaning attached ‒ One bit string no different from the next ‒ No data intelligence in storage  Operations are against gross collections of bits, without knowledge of what the bits represent to the customer

Comparison To Block Storage  Objects take form ‒ Not just a string of bits  From storage subsystem to software system – called an object store  Object store itself has knowledge about data  Now able to perform complex functions against the data

What Is An Object? Custom Metadata System Metadata File File + Metadata = Object System Metadata  Filename: NZ JPG  Created: January 4, 2012  Last modified: March 23, 2012 Custom Metadata  Subject: Castle Point Lighthouse  Place Taken: New Zealand  Category: Travel  Allow sharing: Yes File Class = Image

What Is Metadata?  Describes the object ‒ Helps you to find the right one ‒ Tells you what it is ‒ The specifications ‒ Used where and when ‒ Access permissions  Any and all objects ‒ Different attributes per object ‒ Add attributes later

Why Is Metadata Important?  Imagine a grocery store with no labels on any of the cans

Metadata Provides The Label... OVER TIME, METADATA CAN BE MORE VALUABLE THAN THE DATA ITSELF  End-user self-service  Automation  Regulatory compliance  Marketing  Disposition  Procedures  Branding

The Power of Metadata  What if data could describe itself?  Think of how that could ‒ Simplify management ‒ Facilitate protection ‒ Serve as automation ‒ Reduce costs ‒ Mitigate risk  That’s the power of an object Hi there, I am a PowerPoint file.  I was created by John Doe on January 1, 2011  Only the finance department can look at me  I have not been accessed for 6 months  Save your money, I don’t need to be replicated  I contain information about a merger, so you should retain me for 10 years in case you get investigated  Delete me on January 1, 2021 to free up some storage space and reduce legal exposure

The Bridge to Big Data The first step on the path to big data  Get the data in one place  Mine the metadata  Search the content  Gather metrics  Look for trends  Find relationships among objects

Additional Benefits  Low Cost  Reliable  Scalable  Distributed  Efficient

When Not To Use  As a complete replace for other storage forms  Structured data such as SQL databases  Rapidly changing data such as transactions  Data that requires “single source of truth”

Putting Object Storage To Work  Who?  Cloud storage providers  Financials, pharma, oil & gas  Media & content providers  Surveillance, government intelligence  Let’s look at a few common use cases….

Backup  Tape replacement  Far greater reliability than tape  Automated offsite, multi-site storage  Restore from anywhere  Faster restores  Integration with continuous data replication  Example Technology: IBM Cleversafe

Backup Original Data SITE 1 SITE 2 SITE 3 Slicestor ® Appliances The Accesser ® can be a physical appliance, virtual appliance, Accesser Application, Docker Container or Embedded Accesser. The Accesser ® transforms objects into slices and vice versa. Accesser ® Appliance, Application, VM, Docker Container or Embedded Accesser ® The Slicestor ® stores slices of objects. (No more than one slice of a given object) The Slicestor ® is a physical appliance. Slicestor ® and Accesser appliances are built using commodity hardware components, and are available from Cleversafe and certified partners. $ - Cleversafe systems can be designed with over 10 9’s of permanent reliability % of data loss in any given year - That’s 34,633,083,744.1 years mean time to data loss

Long Term Archival  More cost effective than typical disk solutions  Far greater reliability than tape (again)  Overcome corruption risks  Greater reliability and far lower costs than duplicating on enterprise-grade disk storage  Example Technology: IBM Softlayer

Long Term Archival  Cost as low as $0.04/GB/month  Objects written multiple times per cluster with auto-healing capabilities in case of drive failure.  API accessibility

Media/Content Repository  Application Data?  NFS? CIFS?  Security Camera Footage?  Training Videos, Streaming Content? Spectrum Scale SSD Fast Disk GNR Tape POSIX NFS CIFS Active File Manager GPFS Single Name Space Policies for Tiering, Data Distribution, Migration to Tape and Cloud iSCSI Hadoop OpenStack CinderSwift ManilaGlance Nova VMWare SRMVADP VAAIvSphere

How To Test  Softlayer  OpenStack:  velopment_saio.html velopment_saio.html  k/ k/  guide/install/apt/content/installing- openstack-object-storage.html guide/install/apt/content/installing- openstack-object-storage.html  Ubuntu/Redhat, Virtualize it

Summary Questions?