• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Gestalt IT

Your Place For the Latest News in Enterprise IT

  • Exclusives
  • Tech Talks
  • Field Day
  • Favorites
  • *
  • Rundown
  • Gestalt News
  • Podcast

The Year of Cloud Extension

Every Field Day event seems to have a theme. Although we don’t assign one, it is the nature of the industry that tech comes in waves and affects every product on the market. Reflecting on Storage Field Day in Denver last week, it is clear that the enterprise storage industry is rapidly extending its reach into the cloud.

Is your data “here” or “there”? This is the central question of cloud extension and data mobility

The Limits of On-Premises Storage

Storage is a conservative industry, and enterprise IT is loathe to allow data outside the safe confines of the data center. But on-premises storage has its limits, and the allure of cloud services is undeniable. So enterprise storage providers are shifting their stance, embracing cloud as an extension of on-premises storage solutions.

Conventional storage systems are as limiting as they are comfortable. From a technical perspective, storage arrays tend to be monolithic, with more “scale-up” than “scale-out”. And this is sensible, since most applications can be served by a few clustered controllers and a rack of disks. It also matches the spending patterns of the enterprise, where storage tends to be purchased on a project-by-project basis rather than as an enterprise-wide utility.

But applications are pushing the boundaries of on-premises storage solutions, with multi-site and in-the-cloud processing becoming increasingly common. How do you move data reliably and safely when a single array is the storage platform? There are many software solutions for this, but few are truly integrated with both the application and the underlying storage solution.

Then there is the question of data protection. Backup and archiving are much more likely to be enterprise-wide services, and again they are often not well integrated with applications or storage.

Linking To the Cloud

Incorporating cloud storage into the data center is not a new idea. I provided consulting around metro-area storage as a service at StorageNetworks back in 1999, and numerous companies have produced cloud gateways for enterprise customers. But the kind of cloud extension we are seeing today is significantly different.

Cloud storage extension is a concept of truly-integrated on-premises and cloud storage, with data moving smoothly between different locations as needed. Some examples (Nasuni, ClearSky Data) centralize storage in the cloud while most others (Nimble Storage, NetApp, Primary Data, Datrium) are more of a hybrid based on data replication concepts. StarWind and AcloudA even created a disk drive interface for cloud storage! But all embrace the central premise of data non-locality.

This is where things get interesting: If we assume that data is here (in the data center), it skews our view of the cloud and multi-site operation. But if we assume that data is there (in the cloud or simply somewhere not-here), we begin to open the door to a new concept that allows for data and application mobility. The assumption leads to the enabling technology, which is the path to real datacenter transformation.

This is the concept behind NetApp’s Data Fabric, and why I was so excited to see NetApp inside Microsoft Azure: Suddenly the old isolated datacenter data can be in the cloud, too. And this seems to be the long-term goal of Primary Data, with a global metadata index that can locate data anywhere as needed, both inside and outside the data center.

Stephen’s Stance

If data is locked in the datacenter, so are applications. But this view is out of step with the Internet-enabled world of applications, mobile devices, and “things”. The first step towards overcoming data gravity is to discard the concept of data locality and begin building a new infrastructure that can support this philosophy. Once data is “there”, in the cloud, applications may begin moving as well.

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Stephen Foskett

Stephen Foskett is an active participant in the world of enterprise information technology, currently focusing on enterprise storage, server virtualization, networking, and cloud computing. He organizes the popular Tech Field Day event series for Gestalt IT and runs Foskett Services. A long-time voice in the storage industry, Stephen has authored numerous articles for industry publications, and is a popular presenter at industry events. He can be found online at TechFieldDay.com, blog.FoskettS.net, and on Twitter at @SFoskett.
  • Docker Enterprise Sold to Mirantis, Docker Desktop, Hub Raise $35MM - November 19, 2019
  • Juniper NXTWORK 2019 Keynote Live Blog - November 12, 2019
  • Where Did Tech Field Day Come From? Tech Field Day at 10 - November 4, 2019
  • Druva Protects Corporate Data Outside the Firewall - October 30, 2019
  • It’s All About the Delegates: Tech Field Day at 10 - October 27, 2019
  • Nth Generation Symposium Keynote Live Blog - October 24, 2019
  • SolarWinds Aims to Connect the Data Dots - October 24, 2019
  • Celebrating 10 Years of Pure Storage and Tech Field Day - October 23, 2019
  • Meeting the Storage Performance Requirements of AI and ML Workloads with WekaIO - October 23, 2019
  • Commvault Go Day 1 Live Blog - October 15, 2019
Share this...
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • Reddit
  • email

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Exclusives

Gestalt IT Exclusives are original long-form posts written by the Gestalt IT team and published here first. Exclusives are highlighted in our weekly Gestalt News email. Sign up today, or follow us on Twitter!

Connect

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

More Exclusives

On The Hunt with Confluera

VMware is Delivering Pipelines to the Cloud with CAS

Meet Field Day Delegate – Gina Rosenthal

Meet Field Day Delegate – Greg Ferro

LogicMonitor Reveals the True Cost of IT Outages

Sign up for Gestalt News!

Select One or More Topics

Gestalt IT on YouTube

Stephen Foskett and David Hill Discuss Cloud and Veeam at AWS re:Invent

Simplification Adds Risk TFDx Pure Accelerate

Subscribe on YouTube

Footer

Gestalt – (noun) an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.

About Gestalt IT

Categories

  • Exclusives
  • Tech Talks
  • Field Day
  • Favorites
  • *
  • Rundown
  • Gestalt News
  • Podcast

Topics

The Socials

  • View GestaltIT’s profile on Facebook
  • View GestaltIT’s profile on Twitter
  • View Gestalt_IT’s profile on Instagram
  • View isaHnBrJzPtxd5PcCOoSSw’s profile on YouTube

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Editors:

  • Stephen Foskett
  • Tiffany Lardomita
  • Rich Stroffolino

Copyright © 2019 · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in