George Crump

When to Use Encryption, Replication, or Immutability

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Given the importance of an organization’s data, IT must understand when to use encryption, replication, or immutability as part of an overall data resiliency plan. If it is lost because of a disaster, stolen by a rogue employee, or locked up by ransomware, the financial and reputational costs to the business are exorbitant. Knowing how and when to employ these tactics is critical to an overall data resiliency strategy.

When to Use Encryption

Encryption doesn’t necessarily protect data from being accessed; it simply ensures that if data is accessed, only those with proper authorization can read it. Therefore, IT should not use encryption as a ransomware deterrent. Encrypting data once does not mean it can’t be re-encrypted by another process. For a ransomware attack to be successful, it doesn’t need to read the organization’s data; it just needs to ensure the organization can’t.

when to use encryption
Data Encryption is one component of data resiliency

Encryption can occur at three levels within the infrastructure. If the application supports it, it can encrypt data before sending it over the network and to the storage system. The network, either the card or the switch, can also encrypt data as it goes across the network. And either the storage software or the physical drives can encrypt data as they receive it. The downside of encryption is that if the level applying the encryption is compromised, the data is clear for unauthorized access.

The advantage of application-side encryption is that the access key is only given to authenticated application users. Application-level encryption includes operating system or hypervisor encryption, like the type available through VMware VM Encryption. The downside is that many applications don’t provide this capability. Additionally, many customers don’t implement encryption for applications that can implement it because of performance concerns.

Network encryption is essential but only effective while the data is in flight. It must be decrypted before being written to the storage system.

The organization must ensure that it encrypts data while it remains on physical media. Application encryption provides this level of protection because the data stays encrypted from the point of transmission through the actual writing and storing of the data on the media. A few storage software solutions can provide encryption per volume, enabling organizations to encrypt datasets where the application can’t. Self-encrypting drives provide encryption for a situation where the storage software or the application can’t or the organization wants a blanket approach to data encryption.

When to Use Encryption at the Application Level

If it supports it, application encryption is the most effective means of encryption because it prevents outside access from anything that is not explicitly authorized through the application. There are, however, some negatives to application-level encryption. First, the advantage that all access must come through that application is also a disadvantage. It can make sharing the data with external processes like reporting and analytics engines more difficult. Application encryption will also negatively impact performance, so the application server hardware may need to be more powerful. Application encryption may also render technologies like deduplication useless. Still, as we describe in our white paper “Exposing the High Cost of Deduplication,” the cost of media (flash and HDDs) is so inexpensive now that the payback on the technology isn’t worth the other negative drawbacks. 

Finally, application encryption is not universal but specific to that application. Most organizations support dozens of applications and various use cases. Managing the encryption settings on these various applications is confusing, and there is still the problem of some applications or use cases not providing data encryption.

IT should use application-side encryption when possible, especially if the application’s data is critical to the organization or if there is one predominant application in the environment. Organizations should consider combining that encryption with either storage software or media encryption to provide an extra layer of security.

When to Use Encryption in the Network

IT should use network encryption for data transmission across a long-haul network connection. While deploying replication within the data center can further secure data, it is most exposed during a longer transmission. The replication process, either in the application or the storage software, should provide this functionality. It is important to remember that these processes will almost always decrypt data before writing it to storage.

When to Use Encryption in Storage

IT should use storage encryption when application encryption isn’t available, or there is concern over software overhead. The organization may also consider it as a means to further secure data. As with application encryption, storage encryption aims to protect data from an attempt to access data externally. If the storage software provides encryption, it can keep departments or customers (in the MSP use case) from accessing data they shouldn’t. They’d need to be authorized by the encrypted volume.

Within a storage system, self-encrypting drives are typically controlled through a single key, fed to it by the storage solution on bootup.  The storage solution has to support the creation, provisioning, and management of the keys for each drive. The problem with self-encrypting drives is that once the storage system gives out the key, anything accessing those drives through the storage system has clear access. Self-encrypting drives’ primary advantage is protection during disposal. Using self-encrypting drives, IT can return old or broken drives to the manufacturer for disposal without concern since their content is not readable.

Encryption’s Role in Ransomware Protection

Encryption has almost no role in protecting data before a ransomware attack or helping an organization recover after an attack. IT should use encryption to prevent data theft or accidental access to data by unauthorized parties.

When to use Replication

Most organizations use replication to create an additional copy of their data at a disaster recovery (DR) site. Some organizations also use replication to create a copy locally within the data center in case the production storage system fails.

While most customers want data replication, the cost of the secondary hardware to implement the process often means the organization must go without or only replicate the most critical of workloads. The high costs are because most storage vendors require a system similar to production at the DR site. This requirement means that if the organization implements an all-flash array (AFA) in production, they must also implement an AFA at the DR site using the same vendor to supply both systems.

However, replication, by itself, will not protect the organization from a ransomware attack. If data is encrypted on the primary storage system, a replication process will replicate that encrypted data to the secondary copies. There is also the potential of the malware instantiating on the disaster recovery site first and encrypting the secondary copy. If the organization is cross-replicating data between the two sites, there is even the potential of infecting the secondary site.

Replication’s Role in Ransomware Recovery

when to use encryption
Data replication provides an electronic air gap when combined with immutable copies

Replication has a role in ransomware recovery but IT must combine it with a technology capable of creating immutable copies of data. Then replication can copy this data to a secondary storage system elsewhere in the data center or to a different storage solution. Then if the storage software can execute an independent snapshot schedule on the secondary system, the customer can create a digital air-gapped copy of data that provides an additional recovery source in case of a successful ransomware attack.

When to Use Immutable Data Copies

The primary purpose of immutable data copies is to protect an organization’s data against a ransomware attack. However, it can also help an organization recover data if a user accidentally deletes or overwrites data. Immutable copies will not protect against theft because the data is still readable. They also will not protect against a storage system or site failure because the software stores immutable copies on the same storage system as production.

A weakness of leveraging immutable copies as part of a ransomware recovery strategy is the inherent weakness of software vendors’ implementation of the technology. Most vendors, who use their snapshot feature to create an immutable copy, require users to manually set the snapshot to immutable, which makes it challenging to manage a high number of snapshots. It is not an automatic process as it should be. This requirement risks data until the snapshot is manually set to immutable. Most storage vendors rely on the old legacy storage I/O stack, limiting the snapshot frequency and retention time. These systems can’t deliver the production-class performance and snapshot granularity required to recover from a ransomware attack.

Immutable Copies’ Role in Ransomware Recovery

Immutable snapshots, if the storage system can execute persistent snapshots (every few minutes) and retain that snapshot indefinitely (weeks or months) without impacting performance, are an excellent defense against a ransomware attack. The IT team should take the extra step of creating a digital airgap, replicating that data to a secondary storage system at a DR site and, if affordable, within the data center.

A Holistic Approach to Encryption, Replication, and Immutability

Organizations need to employ encryption, replication, and immutability in tandem, optimally using each capability. Then they need to layer in other capabilities to provide 100% data resiliency. The problem is that many storage systems don’t provide all of these capabilities with a single product, and others limit how deeply IT can use them. StorONE’s modern storage engine is a complete rewrite of storage I/O. It is not dependent on the legacy I/O stack, enabling IT to deploy these capabilities from a single platform and not limit their use because of performance concerns.

The StorONE engine supports application-side encryption. It can also provide encryption at the virtual storage container (VSC) level and supports self-encrypting drives, enabling IT to select the strategy that makes the most sense. That same engine enables cascading replication between multiple sites, and it can replicate to disparate hardware bringing down the cost of disaster recovery infrastructure. Finally, StorONE’s snapshot technology is immutable by default, and IT can set schedules to execute every 30 seconds while retaining those snapshots indefinitely without impacting performance. When implemented together, StorONE’s encryption, replication, and immutability enable IT to defend the organization from rogue employees, theft, natural disasters, and ransomware.

Leveraging Layers of Resiliency

A Data Resiliency Strategy should have multiple layers, and we’ve only highlighted three of those layers in this article. Additional layers include:

  • Eliminating the need for a write cache while still delivering high performance
  • Redundant storage controllers
  • Protection from storage media and enclosure failures.

Join StorONE’s Chief Product Strategist, George Crump, and Solutions Architect, James Keating, for our live webinar, “The Six Requirements for a Data Resiliency Plan.” During the webinar, they will review the data threat list and provide insight on how to design a multi-level data resiliency plan to ensure continuous data access regardless of the threat the organization faces. Learn what data resiliency features you need and how to implement them properly.

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Live on: Thursday, December 1s at 11:00 am ET / 8:00 am PT

All attendees will receive an advance copy of our latest white paper, “Developing a Data Resiliency Plan for Continuous Data Access.”

5 Reasons for Ransomware Recovery Failure

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overcome the five reasons for ransomware recovery failure so you don't have to pay the ransom
Ransomware recovery failure leads to ransom payments 67% of the time.

According to a recent IDC survey, 92% of IT professionals are confident in their ability to recover from a ransomware attack. Nevertheless, 46% of these organizations were successfully attacked and 67% of that group were unable to successfully recover from the attack. There are five reasons for ransomware recovery failure. If these reasons aren’t addressed, your organization will also be part of the 46% that was successfully attacked and the 67% of that group that had to pay the ransom. The current average ransom payment is $228,000, which means a potential $35 million in ransoms were paid by this group, shaking their ransomware recovery confidence.

The five reasons for ransomware recovery failure are:

  1. A lack of frequent backups of ALL data
  2. The vulnerability of backup data copies and backup application metadata
  3. A slow recovery process that makes paying the ransom tempting
  4. The lack of an isolated recovery environment known to be free of malware
  5. The lack of testing. Ransomware recovery is different.

Our next webinar, “Beat Ransomware – How to Turn a Data Protection Double Play,” explains how doubling up on backup software and hardware protection features can create a ransomware recovery strategy to overcome these five shortcomings.

Ransomware Recovery Requires Frequent Backups

The first step in achieving ransomware recovery success is to increase the frequency of backups. Once a night is no longer enough. The goal is to reduce your threat exposure window so the amount of data lost after the attack is minimal. Modern backup software applications now deliver technologies like block-level incremental (BLI) backups to minimize the amount of data transfer and enable backups throughout the day of all data, not just so-called mission-critical data. Attacked organizations may be able to bring mission-critical systems back online but then still end up paying the ransom to regain access to non-mission-critical data.

The problem is the increase in backup frequency and scope puts a strain on the backup infrastructure. Backup data flow is now random instead of sequential, and the backup storage hardware may be unable to keep pace.

Look for a backup solution that leverages flash storage to keep pace with the high number of BLI backups. This requirement does not mean the organization must use an all-flash storage system for backup. Instead, it needs a solution with intelligent auto-tiering that optimally uses flash and hard disk drives to power through these backups while keeping costs in check.

Ransomware Recovery Requires Protected Backups

Bad actors know that IT will look toward their backups as a means to recover, so, increasingly, they go after those first before encrypting anything else. The second of the five reasons for ransomware recovery failure is the vulnerability of backup data. A successful ransomware recovery strategy requires hardening the two types of backup application data; copies of the production data they are assigned to protect and the metadata it creates so you can find data when needed.

Most modern backup applications support moving data to an immutable storage system, typically an object store. The problem is that most object storage systems cannot sustain the high random ingest rates the increase in backup frequency requires. Most backup vendors suggest two systems to meet the demands of increasing backup frequency and backup data hardening.

The problem is the backup data is exposed until the backup process completes and the backup software can transfer the data to the immutable storage system. There is also the challenge that IT now has two essential but separate storage systems to manage and maintain within the backup infrastructure.

overcome the five reasons for ransomware recovery failure by protecting backup data
Lock and shield your backup data from attack

Backup metadata is also a prime target of ransomware attacks. While most backup software applications can rebuild the metadata index, it does take time. The bad actor’s goal is to slow down the recovery process to make paying the ransom more appealing.

Look for a backup solution that can make the copies of production and backup metadata immutable within seconds of it landing on the backup storage target without having to transfer to a secondary system. The solution should also be able to present an object store so that you don’t need to support and pay for multiple storage systems.

Ransomware Recovery Requires Rapid Restores

Another challenge that forces organizations to give up on their ransomware recovery tools is the time it takes to restore data. Part of the time delay is identifying a known good copy. Another delay is the time it takes to instantiate the data for user access. According to a recent Sophos survey, the average time to recover from a ransomware attack is over one month. The temptation of paying the ransom and getting your data back “instantly” is appealing, but that same survey found that only 4% of the organizations that paid the ransom got all their data back!

Modern backup applications have features like instant recovery to eliminate network transfer times. However, suppose your applications and users expect all-flash or hybrid performance. In that case, they may not appreciate executing an instant recovery to a hard-drive-only backup storage target. The instant recovery process adds additional overhead, which also decreases performance.

Look for a backup storage target that can deliver production-class performance. If the solution uses the flash tier intelligently, as described earlier, it can reallocate capacity on that tier so that instantly recovered data will perform similarly to production.

Ransomware Recovery Requires an Isolated Recovery Environment

Of the five reasons for ransomware recovery failure, the fourth, the lack of an isolated recovery environment, is the most overlooked. During a recovery, malware trigger files may continue to lurk on production storage, ready to reinfect any recovery attempt. Most organizations have no answer to this problem, and suggestions from industry analysts reflect an “it’s not in my budget” mentality. Most organizations can’t justify a system sitting idle in the data center waiting for ransomware recovery.

Look for a backup storage target that can build on the instant recovery performance described above to deliver standby storage. A backup storage target with this capability is highly available and has enterprise storage features like snapshots and replications. There are reasons beyond ransomware recovery for standby storage, but its ability to see an organization through an attack is invaluable. Most importantly, the standby storage capability requires only a minimal addition in backup storage costs.

Test, Test, Test

Another major factor in ransomware recovery success is testing. Most organizations don’t test the ransomware attack scenario specifically. Ransomware recovery is fundamentally different than disaster recovery (DR). In a disaster, your primary data center is gone, or at least unavailable. Your DR site has a known good copy of data and is likely not experiencing the same disaster. Depending on the disaster, your users and maybe even most of your customers also deal personally with the disaster. As a result, they will not pressure you for immediate access to their applications. You can’t take weeks to recover, but you have more time than you think to recover from a natural disaster.

During a ransomware attack, the data center appears to be fine, but the data is corrupted. There is a good chance that replicated copies of that data at the DR site are also unusable. Production storage is available, but restoration will likely happen to an environment still under attack. Users are on their laptops, ready to get to work and waiting for you to fix the problem. Sadly, time is of the essence, and there is the temptation of paying the ransom.

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Solving the Pain of NAS Migration

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Moving from old network-attached storage (NAS) systems to a new one is an all too frequent project for IT, so solving the pain of NAS migration is a top objective for data center professionals. The NAS migration problem stems from the fact that today, NAS systems are often the primary storage solution for most data centers, supporting virtualized environments like VMware and database environments like Oracle or MS SQL.

NAS systems are, of course, still used for unstructured data storage like user files, backup data, and archiving older data. Additionally, unstructured data capacity requirements continue to grow at an alarming rate. The “mission creep” of NAS solutions pushes NAS systems that are only two and three years old to the breaking point and has IT searching for a better NAS solution.

In StorONE’s upcoming webinar, “How to Build a Better NAS,” we help IT professionals who are interested in solving the pain of NAS migration. During the webinar will examine the five biggest NAS challenges and provide insight into how to build a NAS solution that solves them. One of the biggest pains, though, is NAS Migrations.

The Source of NAS Migration PAIN

The number one NAS challenge that IT professionals face is how to replace or upgrade their current NAS system. The migration issue frequently arises because most NAS solutions can’t scale to keep up with capacity and performance demands. These systems eventually reach a point where further expansion is either impossible or doing so compromises performance and availability.

Hitting “the wall” then means that IT must go through a storage migration process, but one that is much more difficult than a block storage migration. The NAS system stores most of the organization’s data in most data centers. Additionally, these systems may have millions or even billions of files. Transferring this data set across TCP/IP using legacy SMB and NFS protocols is a time-consuming and error-prone process that will only worsen yearly as the total capacity and number of files continue to increase.

The Cost of NAS Migration Pain

The reason IT teams are investing time in solving the pain of NAS migration is the potential payoff both professionally and personally. Suppose IT can create a better NAS solution that can eliminate the need to ever do another migration. In that case, the business outcomes are significant because migration costs are so high. First, IT needs to invest the time it probably doesn’t have in researching and testing a potential NAS replacement. In today’s “do more with less” IT reality, most organizations don’t have labs and test cages to perform real-world system testing. Second, there is the hard cost of buying a second system and running two NAS systems in parallel. Research shows that the average cut-over time from an old NAS solution to a new one is six to eight months. For most organizations, the parallel operation will last more than a year.

Waiting for data to transfer is a big NAS migration pain.
Waiting for NAS Migrations?

The final concern is the time involved and infrastructure upheaval. IT must monitor the migration process constantly and step in when something interrupts the transfer. IT also needs to account for user profile changes to ensure they are correctly pointed at the new NAS solution. As the last step, IT must ensure that all backup and disaster recovery procedures are updated.

Eliminating these hard and soft costs means tremendous IT budget savings and massive savings of IT hours, enabling them to work on more important business-advancing projects. If IT never needs to manage a data migration project, it also means that data, users, and applications are never disrupted.

Workarounds for NAS Migration Pain

Storage Vendors have, of course, tried to come up with workarounds to help IT with solving the pain of NAS migrations. The most common solution is selling another NAS system before the current system hits “the wall.” Adding more NAS systems may forestall NAS migrations but at the cost of massive complexity. Organizations using this approach often have four or five NAS systems, which requires IT to manage each of them individually. IT professionals must also constantly balance users and applications between the NAS systems.

To simplify their multi-NAS environment, some organizations buy a global file system overlay that locks them into a specific vendor and adds another layer to learn and manage. Additionally, global file system add-ons are costly, sometimes more expensive than the NAS systems they manage.

Another potential workaround is scale-out NAS systems. These systems expand capacity and performance as IT adds additional nodes to the cluster of nodes. The problem is that instead of simply adding media to an inexpensive storage enclosure, IT is now buying computing, networking, and memory each time it needs to add capacity. Often, the nodes need to match each other, so moving to new higher-density media or higher-performing media requires creating a new cluster that needs independent management and manual rebalancing of workloads.

While predictable, scale-out NAS costs are expensive because the customer never enjoys the benefits of the upfront investment. The real problem is that scale-out systems are massive consumers of network ports, which are in very short supply. Most customers tell us that lead times on additional network switches are eight months to a year.

In the end, IT will need to perform a NAS migration because of the limitations of NAS storage software. It is a complex and multi-step project.

How to Eliminate NAS Migrations

Solving the pain of NAS migration is simple, just eliminate NAS migrations. The problem is, eliminating NAS migrations requires rethinking storage software. Traditional storage software used in most storage systems is based on decades-old code that is not optimized for today’s storage hardware. It cannot support the maximum performance of memory-based storage like flash drives or the effects of high-density hard disk drives.

These systems are also very rigid. They are unable to mix in new technology as it comes to market, allowing customers to leverage their original investment while taking advantage of innovations that enable them to keep pace with the ever-growing demands placed on NAS systems. The problem is, vendors take a shortcut to the market by leveraging old code and adding a few features. Eventually, customers pay the price for these shortcuts by buying a storage solution for each use case that constantly needs migration to a new platform.

StorONE took no shortcuts. It spent its first eight years rewriting storage I/O from the ground up. The result is an efficient storage engine that extracts the full performance of memory-based storage and allows the use of high-density hard disk drives without the downsides. The StorONE engine can scale to 20PB in a single two-node cluster. It can support storage technology of different types, densities, and even manufactures but abstracts the physical hardware from the actual use case thanks to StorONE’s Virtual Storage Container (VSC) technology. VSCs enable use-case-specific quality of service (QoS) for performance and data resiliency. In the NAS use case, customers can create a flash-only VSC or Hybrid using our advanced auto-tiering algorithm. Our vRAID technology enables customers to use 20TB hard drives in hybrid systems without concerns about week-long drive recoveries.

NAS Migration PAIN Eliminated With StorONE
NAS Migration PAIN Eliminated With StorONE

The StorONE Engine and VSCs enable customers to move all their NAS systems to a single StorONE instance and create a better NAS experience. Users and applications will benefit from increased performance and data resiliency, the organization will benefit from reduced costs, and IT will benefit from a return of many hours.

Learn More:

To learn more about building a better NAS, join us on Wednesday, October 12th, at 1:00 PM ET/ 10:00 AM PT for our live webinar, “How to Build a Better NAS.” During the webinar, we will review this challenge and the other four and explain why today’s NAS systems fall short. Then we will introduce you to a better NAS solution that can exceed these requirements and become the long-lasting foundation of the organization’s storage infrastructure. 

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Overcoming MSP Storage Challenges

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To increase their monthly recurring revenue (MRR), Managed Service Providers (MSPs), must focus on overcoming MSP storage challenges. These organizations typically start with a particular area of specialization, such as backup, or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and then try to increase their MRR by offering additional services to those customers while also continuing to onboard new customers. The problem is that each new service offering often requires a storage system different than the original.

MSPs deal with potentially the worst case of storage sprawl. Not only are they managing five to six different storage systems, but each customer is also using some or all these systems. Overcoming MSP Storage challenges require that they follow a unique set of guidelines.

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MSPs Must Consolidate Storage

Storage Sprawl tops the list of MSP storage challenges. Adding a storage system for each new service offering cuts into its potential profitability and may even add so much operational overhead that it makes other service offerings less profitable. To overcome sprawl, MSPs must look for a storage system that can support multiple workloads and consolidate the infrastructure into a single storage solution. Today’s storage hardware (controllers and media) can support multiple use cases simultaneously. The problem is that the traditional storage software, common in today’s storage systems, is not optimized to use high-performance flash drives or high-density hard disk drives efficiently. StorONE’s architecture rethinks storage I/O for maximum hardware efficiency and utilization. Where other vendors throw hardware at the problem, StorONE throws efficiency. The results are lower costs and reduced data center footprint requirements.

However, the variety of MSP use cases is extreme, ranging from backup to virtualization to databases. An MSP storage solution must not only be able to support this range of I/O profiles but also ensure that one workload does not starve another for resources. StorONE’s Virtual Storage Containers (VSC) enable MSPs to create storage tenants per service or clients within the service. Each VSC can have a unique performance profile, drive redundancy setting, and data protection configuration. VSCs can be templated, dramatically reducing management overhead, provisioning time, and eliminating configuration mistakes.

MSP Storage Must Be Ransomware Resilient

Ransomware is a problem for every data center, but the problem is magnified in the MSP data center. A breach means that dozens, maybe even hundreds of businesses are now at risk. MSPs are becoming high-profile targets. MSPs have the added challenge of customer mistakes leading to a breach, even if the MSP has followed all the best practices. Customers will still expect the MSP to recover their data.

Overcoming MSP Storage Challenges requires ransomware resiliency.

Protection against an attack is an excellent first step, but eventually, an attack will work through its defenses, and MSPs will need a ransomware recovery strategy. That strategy must include frequent data protection captures, immutable storage of protected data, and an isolated recovery environment. With these components in place, the MSP can return its customers to a safe and fully operating environment within minutes.

StorONE offers its 360° Data Protection capability, which enables organizations to continuously protect data and store the protected copies in a space-efficient, immutable state. If a ransomware attack hits a customer’s VSC, the MSP can use the immutable copies to return the customer to production within minutes of the attack.

MSP Storage Must Be Flexible

MSP growth is hard to predict; it can come in spurts as the MSP launches new services or slow and steady as it adds new customers. MSPs need the flexibility to accommodate these conflicting growth patterns. They need to be able to granularly add capacity and performance in response to growth. The storage solution should not force them into using a specific media manufacturer, type, or capacity. It should also not force the MSP to add entire shelves or nodes. MSPs require the flexibility to meet today’s needs today, and the scalability to meet tomorrow’s needs tomorrow.

With StorONE, MSPs can add flash or hard disk drives from various manufacturers and of different densities. The MSP can add as few of these drives as the storage enclosure allows. Even though the drives are mixed, the MSP enjoys the full performance and capacity of those drives. StorONE’s VSCs extract the drive hardware from the MSP service or customer use case.

MSP Storage Must Be Future-Proof

Migrating data from an old storage system to a new one is challenging for any organization. The storage migration challenge for MSPs, again is magnified because they are not only moving data but also moving customers’ data. One mistake can cost them. The best migration is no migration; the storage solution should adapt and evolve, eliminating storage refreshes and migrations.

MSP Storage must be Future-Proof

StorONE’s ability to use VSCs to abstract storage hardware from the applications it services enables MSPs to add new hardware gradually. Administrators can add newer, higher-density, or higher-performing drives as they become available. If a drive reaches the end of life, remove it, and StorONE’s vRAID technology will automatically rebuild the new drive in record time (minutes for flash drives and a few hours for hard disk drives).

StorONE’s efficiency delivers massive performance and scalability from mid-range servers, which we turn into storage controllers. Those controllers will age out, and you may need more motherboard bandwidth in the future. With StorONE, MSPs can non-disruptively replace storage controllers and seamlessly move to next-generation PCIe buses.

Conclusion

Overcoming MSP Storage challenges is possible with StorONE. An MSP adopts a storage strategy built on a modern single storage engine. This engine can provide a broad portfolio of solutions supporting a wide range of workloads that can increase MRR without reducing profit margins. At the same time, they can improve their ransomware resiliency to the point that it can become an additional service offering within the MSP.

To learn more, register for our webinar “Increase MRR by Reducing Storage Complexity”, live on September 29th at 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 am CT.

How to Reduce Storage Complexity

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Organizations trying to reduce their storage total cost ownership (TCO) need to figure out how to reduce storage complexity. If organizations only had one workload and that workload didn’t need data protection, then storage management would be very simple. IT would only need to buy and manage one storage system. Organizations, of course, have many more than one workload; they have dozens, if not hundreds. All of those workloads need protection from disasters and ransomware.

The problem is that the storage industry has not responded with a single storage system that can support all of these workloads’ requirements. Storage vendors have instead responded to the workload variety problem with the exact opposite of a viable solution. In fact, they have worsened the problem with limited-use-case storage systems. Most storage systems on the market have an ideal use case and one or two secondary use cases. The result is storage sprawl, where the customer has to buy five to six different storage systems to meet the requirements of the organization’s users and applications.

Register to Learn How to Reduce Storage Complexity

There is even sprawl within use cases. For example, network attached storage (NAS) systems organizations may have a mainstream solution for user home directories and another for high-performance unstructured data. Or in the backup use case, customers are now being told a best practice is to have a backup storage target for rapid data ingests and then another one for long-term immutable data retention.

Reduce Storage Complexity with Efficient Hardware Optimization

The first step in reducing storage complexity is optimally leveraging the latest innovations in storage hardware. Modern storage hardware can deliver hundreds of thousands of IOPS and up to 20TB of capacity per drive. Most storage vendors, however, require dozens of solid-state drives (SSDs) to deliver a couple hundred thousand IOPS and don’t allow their customers to use high-density drives. Many organizations should be able to meet their storage needs with a dozen flash drives, and their capacity needs with two dozen hard disk drives (HDDs)

Hardware Optimization is a key first step to reduce storage complexity
Efficiency Simplifies Storage

Why is there such a disparity between the potential of the hardware and the results the customers are seeing? Most storage vendors, even though their product may be new, utilize the same decades-old, multi-layer I/O stack to manage data instead of creating new I/O algorithms specific to their solution. These older I/O stacks enable the vendor to get to market quickly but force customers to buy significantly more hardware than they should in order to meet performance and capacity demands. The dependency on these legacy multi-layer I/O stacks also forces vendors to focus on a specific use case instead of consolidation. Even though the raw potential of the hardware resources can address multiple use cases, the inefficiency of the obsolete storage software prohibits customers from fully tapping into those resources.

StorONE, instead of racing to market, took the time to rewrite the storage I/O stack for maximum efficiency. The development effort took eight years, but now the software can deliver on the potential of the latest hardware innovations. Our single-layer I/O engine can deliver 500K IOPS or more from twelve flash drives. It also supports high-density 20TB hard disk drives (HDD) without IT having to worry about week-long rebuilds. StorONE can recover a 1PB volume of 20TB HDDs in less than three hours. Our high-performance auto-tiering algorithm automatically manages data movement between flash drives and HDDs, delivering all-flash array performance at hybrid storage prices.

The StorONE Engine’s efficiency enables maximum hardware utilization and resources to support performance-demanding and capacity-centric workloads simultaneously. Using both flash and hard drives enables the cost-effective application of these resources, creating a very competitive starting price point.

Reduce Storage Complexity with Practical Consolidation

If the storage solution can efficiently use hardware resources, the next step is consolidating workloads onto that efficient platform. Some AFA vendors claim they can consolidate workloads, but their claim requires that IT buy into the philosophy that all data should be on high-performance flash storage, something that most do not. Capacity-centric workloads will still use far more cost-effective HDDs today and in the future. Consolidating all data into a single system that requires the wholesale adoption of a media technology that is ten times more expensive than the alternative is not practical.

StorONE’s vRAID makes the use of high-density drives safe. StorONE’s high-performance auto-tiering algorithm automatically manages data movement between flash drives and HDDs. Its consistency makes using flash and HDDs practical, delivering all-flash array performance at hybrid storage prices.

Beyond supporting mixed media, practical storage consolidation needs to provide control. IT needs to ensure that performance-demanding, mission-critical workloads get the resources they need but also won’t starve other workloads. Again, the AFA solution where all workloads get high-performance is impractical, but neither is a hybrid system delivering inconsistent performance.

StorONE’s Virtual Storage Containers (VSCs) enable organizations to mix these workloads and meet each workload’s performance and data resiliency requirements. VSCs enable IT to set the performance, capacity, drive redundancy, data protection intervals and retention, data encryption, and disaster recovery settings for each workload.

Virtual Storage Containers Enable Practical Storage Consolidation

Consolidation is appealing because most data centers are suffering from sprawl, but each storage system causing that sprawl was bought at a different time and for a different purpose. A “floor sweep” is not practical.

Most IT professionals have a more pressing area of the storage infrastructure than others. It may be improving backup infrastructure to be more resilient and responsive to ransomware attacks or improving the performance of mission-critical databases or a VMware environment. With StorONE, organizations can solve their most pressing problem first and do so cost-effectively; then, as other systems reach end of life, they can move the workloads on those systems to the StorONE Engine. Every time IT moves a workload to StorONE, the benefits of consolidation increase. The environment becomes simpler to manage, operate and protect while also becoming far less expensive.

Reduce Storage Complexity with Future Flexibility

The final step is to make sure the consolidated solution stays consolidated. Most storage systems are hardware-dependent, requiring certain classes of storage or storage network protocols. They can’t easily mix new innovations with existing hardware investments. As a result, the customer faces refreshing or replacing their storage system every four to five years as well as having to deal with increasingly challenging data migration each time.

With StorONE, VSCs are abstracted from the hardware. IT can change or add storage controllers or media without disrupting the users or applications. Media is presented in global pools, but media of different densities and manufacturers can co-exist within those pools. If the customer needs to add capacity after the implementation, they add new drives to that pool. The initial purchase may have been 20TB HDDs, but the addition could be 30TB HDDs or whatever is the highest density drive available at that time. IT may want to upgrade the controllers in five or six years to leverage the bandwidth increase of PCIe Gen 5 or 6. With StorONE, this controller upgrade is a simple non-disruptive controller swap. And, StorONE doesn’t make you pay an extra monthly fee to upgrade for “free” in the distant future. Upgrade when you are ready and when the technology makes sense for you.

Conclusion

Storage Consolidation is the way to storage simplification, but current storage vendors would instead force you to buy a different storage system for each use case. Your data center is not the “App Store,” and you don’t want a half dozen point solutions. Until now, the problem is that no vendor has worked hard to optimize their storage software to take full advantage of modern storage hardware innovations. StorONE did that hard work and can provide a complete portfolio of solutions with ONE Storage Engine.

How Much Flash is Enough Flash?

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While vendors are trying to convince them that they need all-flash, IT professionals are trying to understand how much flash is enough flash. Despite all-flash vendor claims, solid-state drives (SSDs) are not less expensive than hard disk drives (HDDs). In actuality, SSDs are about ten times more expensive than HDDs, so keeping all data on them all the time doesn’t make any financial sense. However, legacy hybrid storage systems that combine SSD and HDD have such a problem delivering a consistent performance that most customers feel they don’t have a choice but to pay the premium and buy an all-flash array (AFA).

Enough Flash for Active Data

How much flash is enough flash if only 20% of data is active?
How much flash is enough flash if only 20% of data is active?

In most data centers, only about 20% of the total data set is active, being read or written to within the last 90 days. The more data the organization stores, the lower, the active data set percentage. For example, organizations with 1PB or more typically only have 10% of data classified as active. While 10-20% is a small percentage, most legacy hybrid storage systems provide enough flash to store only 5% of the active data set. As a result, they constantly have to access data from the hard disk, which is part of the reason for their reputation for inconsistent performance.

With StorONE, IT planners can define how large a flash tier they want to use. StorONE makes this sizing easy because it uses affordable, off-the-shelf commodity SSDs, instead of expensive proprietary configurations. An obvious configuration is to buy enough SSD so that the entire active data set can fit. Some StorONE customers may add a little extra to further reduce HDD tier recalls.

Enough Flash for Performance

Another flash sizing requirement is ensuring that IT planners factor in enough SSDs to meet the performance requirements of the active data set. The reality is performance sizing should no longer be an issue because a single enterprise-class SSD can deliver more than 100,000 IOPS. This per drive performance means with twelve SSDs the system should deliver close to one million IOPS and few data centers need more than 500,000. This per-drive potential means that six to twelve SSDs should deliver more performance than most data centers need. The problem is legacy storage systems, AFAs and Hybrid, use a legacy IO engine, which can’t extract the maximum performance from those drives and will need 48 or more drives to deliver 100,000 to 200,000 IOPS.

StorONE’s efficient storage engine extracts maximum performance from each SSD, so IT planners can leverage more cost-effective high-density SSDs to further reduce costs. For example, a customer with 20% active data and 1PB of total data means a 200TB flash tier is ideal. Factoring in allocation for drive failure protection, the IT planner can meet the requirements using 24 x 15.3TB SSD while expecting more than 600,000 IOPS in performance. And, our drive-based licensing, Scale-for-Free, rewards customers for using those high-density drives.

The innovations within the StorONE engine optimize SSD performance. It also lays the groundwork for hybrid storage that promises to revolutionize the storage infrastructure by delivering all-flash performance at HDD pricing. The first step is to take the steps above to size the flash tier appropriately. The second step is to fix hybrid storage by rewriting the way the auto-tiering algorithm works.

Fixing Hybrid

As we discuss in our latest white paper, “Modernizing Auto-Tiering For Consistent High Performance”, StorONE rewrote the auto-tiering algorithm to proactively move data from the SSD tier to the HDD tier. This new algorithm ensures that SSD capacity is always available for inbound write I/O, solving the primary source of inconsistent performance, trying to move data to HDDs while also receiving new data to the flash tier. Next, StorONE, since it owns the I/O Engine, optimized the internal transfer speed between SSDs and HDDs. Then we rewrote erasure coding, ending long RAID rebuild times. Where other systems put the customer in an exposed state for days on end, StorONE’s vRAID can return them to a fully protected state within three hours without impacting production data access or performance.

All-Flash Performance, Hybrid Storage Pricing

Using off-the-shelf commodity SSDs and extracting maximum performance from them enables customers to leverage high-density drives to create flash tiers containing their entire active data set at a low cost. With this configuration, 90% or more of data accesses will come from the flash tier. Combined with StorONE’s innovations, the organization will see better than AFA performance almost all the time. A peak write burst won’t cause inconsistency, thanks to StorONE’s proactive grooming of the flash tier.

The role of the hard disk tier is to store the rest of the data. Again the StorONE engine’s efficient I/O transfer rate and ability to rapidly recover from drive failure means IT can also use high-density HDDs, 56 x 20TB drives that will deliver about 1PB of useable capacity. The entire solution can fit in a 5U appliance.

Hybrid Improves Data Resiliency

The right auto-tiering algorithm does more than save money; it enables a hybrid storage system to improve data resiliency. For example, StorONE’s vSnap delivers the full promise of snapshots. IT can schedule snapshots to occur as frequently as every thirty seconds and retain those snapshots indefinitely. These snapshots are space efficient, and as they age, they are automatically moved to the HDD tier, making long-term retention practical. Each StorONE Virtual Storage Container (VSC) can support over 500,000 snapshots.

Why retain so many snapshots? They provide ideal protection against ransomware attacks. Each StorONE snapshot is immutable. The granularity of frequent snapshots gives you the best access to the last known good copy of data, minimizing your data threat exposure window.

All-Flash Myths

AFA vendors spin a lot of myths against hybrid storage solutions. The problem is they are comparing their AFAs to legacy hybrid systems that don’t have the advantages of the StorONE Engine, which are maximum SSD utilization, high-performance auto-tiering, and the industry’s fastest recovery from drive failure. AFA vendors don’t have these advantages either; they hide their deficiencies by making their customers, unnecessarily, purchase more SSDs than they should. It is time to revisit hybrid storage!

In our live webinar “The Top Three All-Flash Myths…Debunked!” we’ll go through the AFA claims and show how the right investment in software development can debunk them.

Watch Our On-Demand Webinar Debunking the Top Three All-Flash Myths

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