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Your data, your device, your destination™
HyperQ™ Flash to Cloud™ Enabled Storage White Paper
Parsec Labs, LLC. 7101 Northland Circle North, Suite 105 Brooklyn Park, MN 55428 USA 1-763-219-8811 www.parseclabs.com
[email protected] [email protected]
Introduction In the world of digital storage, the two most desirable new technologies that are the most difficult to integrate are: Flash Storage and Cloud Storage These are two very different technologies with almost completely opposite characteristics. However, both technologies are urgently needed in today’s data centers. The need for flash storage is driven by higher density virtual workloads and ever an increasing need for faster storage. Speed, IOPS and low latency are driving innovation in that world. Cloud on the other hand is addressing the opposite end of the problem. Cloud addresses the need for virtually infinite storage capacity. In a world where some of our most valuable assets are now digital, it is only natural that we avoid deleting data. This behavior is causing our digital footprint to grow exponentially making it almost impossible to host everything on premise. Storage vendors and cloud providers created innovative ways to provide massive amounts of data storage at very affordable rates as a cloud service. The driving factors for this technology are massive capacity, offsite storage and the lowest possible cost. These requirements conflict with each other. Flash is fast, offers minimal latency and is very expensive while cloud is virtually infinite in capacity, provides off site storage, is inexpensive and usually shows very high latency and low throughput / IOPS. As a result we have created a world in which two very distinct technologies don’t mix. There are many solutions addressing the need for speed and there are several solutions deployed that address the need for capacity and low price. Deploying both and effectively managing the transition from one to the other has proven to be a major challenge. Parsec Labs has created the ideal solution to bridge the gap between flash and cloud storage. The HyperQTM storage router is an innovative and effortless to deploy technology that makes it easier than ever to adopt both technologies in one simple step. Using Flash to Cloud™ technology, the HyperQTM storage router brings the speed of flash storage to any data center, transforming existing storage into Hybrid Flash storage
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with a single click. At the same time, it introduces the benefits of cloud storage in a transparent way. Parsec Labs has combined the value of flash storage with the power of cloud archiving into a single appliance that can be deployed transparently. HyperQTM will virtualize the entire storage stack into a single name space. Utilizing its built in policy engine, data can travel transparently from the flash disk all the way to the cloud archive without ever leaving its name space. Introducing flash storage and cloud archiving has never been easier of more affordable. Since the storage router is pass-through device, the benefits of the flash storage and the power of the cloud archive can be deployed within minutes without the need to touch the clients that are accessing the storage.
Figure 1 – The HyperQ™
The HyperQ™ storage router can be equipped with up to 3TB SSD cache per node, turning any existing storage into a Hybrid Flash Array with a cloud archive that can scale to hundreds of terabytes (TB) if needed. The appliance can be equipped with multiple 10GE interfaces to keep up with the most demanding performance requirements while delivering cloud archiving, all in a single solution. The HyperQ™ allows you to choose: your data, your device, your destination.™
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Flash and Cloud Storage Today In today’s data center, it is uncommon to find vast amounts of cloud storage or flash storage. Adopting these new technologies has proven quite difficult and combining both technologies is even more complicated. The adoption of flash disk usually means a complete replacement of the existing storage tier and a massive data migration project. Whether the destination is a hybrid flash disk array, an all flash array or a hyper converged infrastructure device, the path to implementation is a difficult one. When it comes to cloud storage deployment, the cloud archive is, in most cases, entirely isolated from the on premise storage and requires a dedicated process to feed data into the cloud. Cost: The cost of such a deployment is not limited to the hardware cost associated with the new infrastructure. In many cases the labor involved and the business impact of the migration project exceeds the cost of capital purchase and makes the transition very painful. In addition these migrations are often a one way trip, making it very difficult roll back if things don’t work out.
Flash to Cloud™ Enabled Storage with the HyperQ™
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Parsec Labs has created a unique solution using Flash to Cloud™ technology that can be deployed in top of the existing storage delivering the performance of flash storage with the power of a transparent cloud archive. The deployment of the HyperQ™ storage router can be done in less than 30 minutes and the benefits of accelerated access are effective immediately without any impact or configuration change to the machines accessing the storage. When the HyperQ™ storage router is first deployed, it appears to be a pass-through device. All the existing data is still accessible and unchanged. The first noticeable impact is the faster access to the existing data. The massive network bandwidth of the HyperQ™, along with its very high end CPU and memory, provides extremely fast access to the SSD (flash) cache making the storage instantly more responsive to clients accessing it. In the next phase, the administrator can create new policies to use the integrated cloud archive. The cloud gateway comes preconfigured and is quite literally a turnkey solution. The storage router service includes the cloud backend and can be accessed with a single click. No additional contracts are required. In addition, the HyperQ™ provides the ability to replicate data to remote or DR sites. It can also provide an easy way to expand the storage capacity with a few clicks into a larger, single name space therefore eliminating the challenge of reallocating storage to different clients and avoiding the reconfiguration that comes along with a storage tier change. Key Features: 1. Acceleration – Acceleration reduces latency and increases burst throughput and IOPS to existing storage by means of SSD write cache in the HyperQ™. Acceleration is especially beneficial for database and virtual machine performance. 2.Seamless Cloud Gateway – The HyperQ™ provides a fully transparent cloud gateway. With the HyperQTM Flash to Cloud™technology, a single name space can span from the flash storage tier all way down to the cloud archive without the client noticing the difference. Utilizing its smart cache technology, Parsec Labs can provide clients with access to cloud storage at the speed of fast local storage in a transparent fashion. 3.Policy Based Cloud Archiving – The HyperQ™ features a policy engine that will automatically offload data to a cloud archive transparently. The administrator has full control over the data movement. The solution allows for defining data that is eligible for cloud archiving and data that must not be moved. In addition the solution features bandwidth throttling and scheduling of the data transfer to the cloud. 4. Expansion – Expansion allows a managed file system to overflow to newly added storage without service interruption or complicated configuration / migration steps. Even
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as a file system overflows to the configured target storage, all files appear to fully reside in the original file system; the managed file system simply appears to be larger. 5. Migration – Migration allows infrequently accessed data to automatically migrate under control of user-defined migration policy to lower-cost, lower-performance storage, therefore increasing available capacity for more frequently accessed data. Data is also subject to automatic retrieval to higher-performance media when appropriate. This enables optimal exploitation of storage media according to cost. For example, inactive data can be automatically migrated to slower, larger, lower-cost media, while active or “warm” data can be stored on the high-performing SSD or SAN on the local network. Irrespective of where a file physically resides, it always appear to remain in the managed file system. Migration is fully transparent to applications that access migrated files. Dramatically reducing cost: Deploying an all flash array can easily cost $30 per GB. A 24 TB storage array would quickly reach the level of $700,000. In contrast a solution using enterprise class NAS storage would cost less than $10,000 for 50 TB. The HyperQ™ high performance storage router provides services which can transform that NAS storage into virtual flash array and starts as low as $1,000 a month. There is no additional cost for labor.
A Closer Look – The HyperQ™ Architecture Hardware: The HyperQ™ is delivered as a standard 1U rackmount server chassis or as a desktop server. This server is constructed with cutting edge processing capability using the latest CPUs from Intel coupled with the strategic application of award winning solid state drives (SSDs) in order to deliver significant performance advantages. The HyperQ™ also features multiple 1GE or 10GE network interfaces in order to provide optimal network throughput. The HyperQ™ is inserted into your storage environment between shared storage and the clients. It also acts as a router and cloud gateway.
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Figure 3 – Depiction of the HyperQ™ in Your Environment
Software: The HyperQ™ consists of the following software components: 1. A Linux operating system. 2. The Parsec File System – manages file system expansion and data migration between storage tiers at the sub-file level. 3. The Parsec Cache Manager – that exploits SSD and HDD storage in the HyperQ™ for storage acceleration. 4. The Parsec Migration Engine – that selects files for migration according to migration policy. Once a file is selected for migration, the migration engine interacts with the Parsec File System to relocate the file. A migration policy is typically executed periodically, and can also be executed as a one-time event. 5. Diagnostic utilities for The Parsec File System. 6. A web GUI for HyperQ™ configuration. 7. Diagnostic tools, including reporting and telemetry.
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Figure 3 – Inside the HyperQ™ How to deploy, administer, and monitor the HyperQ™: The Storage Administrator’s job is done in four easy steps: 1. Configure new IP address for existing file server from which managed file systems are exported. 2. Define target storage for migration and/or expansion. 3. Define managed file systems. 4. Configure migration policies.
A single dashboard that depicts local storage and cloud storage usage allows ongoing monitoring of the HyperQ™ and file servers. It is simple and efficient, yet effective.
Key Advantages • Virtualize and Accelerate Existing Storage – Virtualize your data and remove the boundaries between islands of individual storage devices. Use the HyperQ™ and your existing storage will perform better than you thought possible. • Simple Deployment and Management – The HyperQ™ will seamlessly integrate with the existing network, no changes are required on existing servers that access the storage. After the HyperQ™ is deployed; its management GUI will allow the admin to manage the entire storage through a single pane of glass. • Cloud Gateway - Utilize cloud storage as needed. Never run out of storage again. • WAN Optimization – the HyperQ™ has special provisions to optimize WAN traffic between sites and to the cloud.
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• Scalability – Scale to your needs in cost and storage requirements. Choose between cost-effective pricing tiers.
Conclusion Using Flash to Cloud™ enabled technology, HyperQ™ offers a unique storage innovation that can introduce flash performance combined with cloud archiving at an affordable rate. Users can use existing storage arrays or deploy / expand using reasonably priced high density storage solutions while getting full flash performance through the HyperQ™ storage router. This advanced solution will be assembled at a fraction of the cost of current flash disk solutions.
Contact Us Parsec Labs, LLC. 7101 Northland Circle North, Suite 105 Brooklyn Park, MN 55428 USA 1-763-219-8811 www.parseclabs.com
[email protected] [email protected]
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