There’s so much data at play in the modern enterprise, and storing it in an effective manner that anyone in the organization can access — even at the edge — proves to be difficult. Add to that the fact that much of it is unstructured and IT departments have quite the challenge on their hands. Presented at August’s Storage Field Day event, the global file system from CTERA offers a way to combat multi-cloud unstructured data.
The Problem of Unstructured Data at the Edge
In today’s IT environment, the growing decentralization and hybridization of infrastructure have led to a need for data everywhere and, in turn, storage. With much of this data being generated at the edge, traditional data storage models fall short of the bill, and a more widespread, adaptable method for storage is required.
To add to the challenges of storing all of the data at play across the modern distributed enterprise, much of the data being generated today is unstructured. Without the obvious organizational structure behind this data, storing it effectively depends on leveraging metadata to arrange files by context. In light of this, today’s IT practitioners need a tool they can use to manage their unstructured data at scale across their hybrid infrastructure.
Solving the Problem of Multi-Cloud Unstructured Data
One vendor well aware of this growing need is CTERA. Their multi-cloud enterprise unstructured data management solution is purpose-built to tackle the problem of handling data at scale across hybrid environments.
CTERA’s global file system leverages the cloud to connect branches and users over a single namespace, providing an “HQ-like” data experience regardless of location. IT does this by hosting the master copy of data in S3 buckets in the cloud, offering a cached version for users attempting to access files. Thanks to this, organizations gain the experience of local storage across the network with global deduping, all while saving money thanks to the economics of the cloud.
How CTERA Works
At their Storage Field Day appearance in August, CTERA’s CEO and co-founder, Liran Eshel, presented their global file storage system. In his presentation, Eshel detailed how their product works to help organizations manage all of their data at scale.
CTERA leverages your existing cloud storage in a spread of around 97% object and 3% Flash/block, using their software-defined solution to create a file structure for your data and then make said data available globally. At the core (which in this case is in the cloud, not the data center), CTERA stores data using their proprietary source encryption keys, ensuring data remains secure — even while being transferred out to the edge. In this scenario, even if someone somehow gains unauthorized access to your storage, they cannot remove data or its deduplication.
Zach’s Reaction
Given the fact that so much data is at play in the average organization, having a method to manage it — even when unstructured — and also have it available across the entire enterprise makes CTERA an effective and efficient solution. That’s why Ray Luchessi, a delegate at the event, dubs CTERA: “Cloud NAS on Steroids“.
Learn more about CTERA by watching all of their presentations from Storage Field Day, or by checking out their website.
