Scality RING Improves Position In Product Scores Across All Use Cases In 2018 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Object Storage Compared To The Previous Year

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- @Scality, a pioneer of #softwaredefined, #multicloud #datastorage, today announced that Scality #RING scored second in all product scores across every use case in the @Gartner Critical Capabilities for #ObjectStorage report that was released on January 25, 2018.  In our view, Scality shines as the top independent storage vendor in the report. For the report, Gartner analysts Raj Bala, Garth Landers and John McArthur evaluated thirteen object storage products against eight critical capabilities: capacity, storage efficiency, interoperability, manageability, performance, resilience, security and multitenancy, and value, across five object storage use cases.  Scality believes that object is still a growing segment of the storage market, and that despite the growing field, Scality maintained and even improved its position in the market over the past year. "We're truly pleased to see Scality consistently scored in second place for all product scores across every use case," said Jerome Lecat, Scality's CEO.  "We feel that our focus and our strong, loyal and growing customer base across the very use cases that Gartner elected to evaluate speaks to our leadership, as do the results expressed in Gartner Critical Capabilities for Object Storage." Software-defined Scality RING object storage turns any standard x86 server into highly expandable storage. It scales without limits and guarantees 100 percent availability—all while reducing cost by as much as 90 percent compared to legacy systems. Scality RING is deployed by more than 185 petabyte-scale customers around the world. It features native file protocols and high-fidelity AWS S3 API, data encryption, volume and bucket data protection, data-restorative versioning, extended location control for data sovereignty, and geo-replication for disaster recovery for customers requiring ironclad data protection.  And, Scality RING scales easily and without disruption, beyond hundreds of petabytes, so will continue to grow with our customers' data. View the full Gartner "Critical Capabilities for Object Storage," (Raj Bala, Garth Landers, John McArthur, 25 January 2018). Scality was also placed in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner's "Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage," (Julia Palmer, Arun Chandrasekaran, Raj Bala, 17 October, 2017) for the second year in a row

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/scality-ring-improves-position-in-product-scores-across-all-use-cases-in-2018-gartner-critical-capabilities-for-object-storage-compared-to-the-previous-year-300597290.html

Cloudian Announces Reseller Agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise

SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 29, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- #Cloudian, the innovation leader in enterprise #objectstorage systems, announced today that #HewlettPackardEnterprise will resell @Cloudian #HyperStore software in the EMEA region through its #Pointnext services business. #HPE customers now have new options for infinitely scalable storage solutions that leverage their HPE servers, storage, and networking investments. This agreement gives HPE customers access to a Cloudian’s enterprise-class storage software through a single purchase order. Cloudian software runs on industry-standard hardware including HPE Apollo and Proliant servers, creating limitlessly scalable storage solutions for enterprise data consolidation on HPE systems. Cloudian object storage software offers a 100% native S3 API that provides industry-leading interoperability, making it the ideal complement for enterprise software that employs the S3 interface. Use case examples for the HPE/Cloudian solution include data protection, active archive for media and entertainment, healthcare imaging, digital surveillance, storage-as-a-service, and artificial intelligence/machine learning applications. “We are thrilled to expand our relationship at HPE in response to the strong demand for Cloudian/HPE solutions,” said Fred Smith, vice president of OEM sales and corporate development at Cloudian. “With the ability to deploy Cloudian software on the HPE servers they rely on today, HPE customers have new options to meet today’s unprecedented data storage challenges.” “Our customers in EMEA are eager to find effective and economical solutions to consolidate, protect and manage their business data,” said Lorenzo De Amici, Worldwide Service Portfolio Manager at HPE. “Our relationship with Cloudian gives HPE customers new options for scalable enterprise storage solutions that capitalize on their existing investments in networking and server technologies.”

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/11/29/1210247/0/en/Cloudian-Announces-Reseller-Agreement-with-Hewlett-Packard-Enterprise.html

Global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market by Size, Type and Application and Focuses on top Key Players: IBM (US), CLoudian (US), DataDirect Networks (DDN) (US), Dell EMC and others

Market Overview of Global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Industry: This report gives us an overview of the Global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market which is classified on the basis of product and its various applications. It also mentions the key area where the demand for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage products is going to have.  Also based on the type of the product the market is divided into various sections such as what are the current trends also, what are the end-users and the technology. Download Sample PDF Copy of this Report: https://www.reportsmonitor.com/request-sample/?post=502078 The various products in the Global Distributed File Systems and Object Storage market along with their numerous applications are also examined in the report. It gives researchers a well-charted map as to where the potential investments need to be done. Also, there are some precautionary factors to be looked at to have an idea of which market route to take.  It also mentions the various insights and parameters which will help propel the growth of the Distributed File Systems and Object Storage market and bring to forth the various opportunities available in the market. This Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market Report scrutinizes the competition subtitles and keeps you in the forefront. It offers an in-depth analysis of the different verticals which brings to the spotlight the working of the Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market. It provides a guiding light in helping you make well-informed business decisions by presenting before you a complete overview and a comprehensive detail of the market. It also explains meticulously the key product area and their future. Scope of the Report The Distributed File Systems and Object Storage market is characterized by constant technological innovation to keep pace with the changing industrial needs. This Market report provides a detailed analysis of worldwide markets for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage from 2012-2017 and provides extensive Industry forecasts 2017-2022 by top Key manufacturers analysis, region, Types,  and Market segment by Applications. This report focuses on markets for #DistributedFileSystems and #ObjectStorage from 2012-2017  the Following top players: #IBM (US), #CLoudian (US), #DataDirect Networks (DDN) (US), #DellEMC (US), #HitachiData Systems (US), #Caringo (US), #NetApp (US), #Panasas (US), #RedHat (US), #HGST (US), #SUSE Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market segment by Types, Local Storage, Shared Storage Market segment by Applications, IT and Telecom, Banking, Government, Retail, Education, Other The Report can be customized according to your needs. Contact our expert team today along with your requirements: https://www.reportsmonitor.com/make-enquiry/?post=502078 Key Question for this Market Report What are the most important aspects driving the worldwide Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market? What are the necessary trends impacting the build-up of the worldwide Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market? What is going to the industry size as well as growth rate be in 2022? Who will be the key manufacturers in this particular Market space? What are the trending factors influencing the Market shares in next few years? Access Complete report with TOC: https://www.reportsmonitor.com/global-distributed-file-systems-and-object-storage-market-size-status-and-forecast-2022-2/ We at Reports Monitor provide an in-depth analysis and key data on the specific Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Market you are looking for. Our Reports are thoroughly researched and a valuable source of guidance for companies and individuals looking for information for the same.

http://www.satprnews.com/2017/11/28/global-distributed-file-systems-and-object-storage-market-by-size-type-and-application-and-focuses-on-top-key-players-ibm-us-cloudian-us-datadirect-networks-ddn-us-dell-emc-and-others/

Nutanix announces new storage, compute services

#Softwaredefined data center player @Nutanix announced that it's adding a new batch of developer-oriented services to its Enterprise Cloud OS software. Additionally, Nutanix is rolling out enhancements to its virtualization technology and new platform features that, overall, support the company's bid to manage #distributedcloud environments for enterprises. Key to the new products is the #Acropolis #ObjectStorageService, which the company said provides an @Amazon Web Services #S3-compatible API that lets app-dev teams consume storage for things like data archival as an on-demand service, similar to other public cloud offerings. On the virtualization front, Nutanix announced performance enhancements planned for its upcoming v5.5 software release, including integrated support for virtual Graphics Processing Units (vGPU), as well as support for Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS). Meantime, Nutanix announced a new compute service dubbed Acropolis Compute Cloud (AC2), which also takes the consumption route and lets app development teams scale infrastructure up or down based on use. Nutanix said AC2 will be included in the company's Enterprise Cloud OS and support compute-only nodes in Nutanix-powered deployments. Nutanix also formally announced that its Enterprise Cloud OS software will run on Intel's new Skylake CPU architecture. "With these new offerings, targeted at developers and workload expansion, Nutanix is the only company that is offering a true public cloud-like experience in the enterprise, which helps customers realize the promise of the multi-cloud era," said Nutnaix chief product officer Sunil Potti, in a statement. At this point, Nutanix said all of the new products are still under development, so there's no information on pricing or release dates.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/nutanix-announces-new-storage-compute-services/

IBM Cloud Object Storage tweaked for on-prem, small footprints

@IBM #Cloud ObjectStorageSystem now offers “compliance-enabled vaults” so customers can create on-premises data vaults that protects data from deletion or modification for #unstructureddata subject to regulations like SEC Rule 17a-4 and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ( #FINRA). @IBM also is offering a new capacity level for customers that want to get started with cloud deployments. The IBM Cloud Object Storage System now starts with a 72 TB capacity level with a concentrated dispersal mode capability that allows for smaller footprint systems to scale to larger ones.  Despite the name, IBM Cloud Object Storage System – based on technology acquired from Cleversafe – is available for on-premises use or in a dedicated environment in the IBM Cloud. IBM hopes the compliance vaults will open up opportunities for the applications market in on-premises object storage, while the lower-capacity option is about getting more customers started with an on-site cloud with the expectation they will move to the public cloud. “This is a new space that they can compete in,” said Scott Sinclair, a storage analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. “We have run studies that show on-premises object storage is less expensive than cloud-based object storage. The bottom line is, public cloud is not always cheaper. “Some workloads are more expensive in the cloud,” Sinclair said. There is evidence customers are learning not all workloads are meant for the public cloud, and that unexpected costs and security are becoming two red flags. The ESG 2017 Storage Trends: Challenges and Spending report found 39% of storage decision makers using off-premises cloud resources had moved at least one workload back to on premises. “There is evidence that organizations need to apply a pragmatic approach with regards to the location of applications and data, whether on- or off-premises,” Sinclair. “Moving a workload to the public cloud is a big decision and should be treated as such. “Additionally, what workloads are coming back? Why? Is it cost? Is it security? Is it availability? And how are these movements changing the cloud strategy within the organizations?” He said  ESG is researching those issues  now. Robert McCammon, IBM’s leader for IBM Cloud Object Storage, said the vendor is tackling security concerns with its compliance vault feature. “This is a new software feature of our existing object storage product that is available with our software release in December,” McCammon said. “This is a new type of vault that prevents operations that are unacceptable on one of these compliance environments.” McCammon said when it comes to compliance rules, “customers don’t have a lot of choices for storage and they have even fewer choices for object storage.”

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/blog/Storage-Soup/IBM-Cloud-Object-Storage-tweaked-for-on-prem-small-footprints

OpenIO Secures $5 Million in VC Funding

@OpenIO, an #objectstorage and #serverlesscomputing startup based in France, announced today that it had raised $5 million in a round of financing headed by @ElaiaPartners, @PartechVentures and @NordFranceAmorçage. The company, which has offices San Francisco, Tokyo and the French cities of Lille and Paris, produces open source object storage software called OpenIO #SDS and a serverless computing framework that allows organizations to run applications directly on their storage infrastructures where data resides. OpenIO provides aggregated capacity from x86 servers and can ultimately scale to over an exabyte of storage and hundreds of billions of objects, according to the startup. Powered by the company's "Conscience" technology, OpenIO enables dynamic load balancing that surpasses the performance limitations of traditional object stores and supports heterogenous clusters comprised of old and new hardware. "Each server collects its own metrics, sends them to a distributed service, called Conscience, which computes a quality score and publishes these scores on a bulletin available to all the servers of the infrastructure: the grid of nodes," wrote Enrico Signoretti, head of product strategy at OpenIO, in a blog post explaining the technology. "This is done every few seconds, asynchronously, so each node always knows the state of all other nodes. Each micro decision on where to place data is done using the best available nodes with the highest scores." And OpenIO SDS is easy on the system requirements. The software can run on single CPU core devices with as little as 512MB of RAM, allowing for deployments that range from data centers to remote embedded devices. "Huge amounts of data are produced and consumed every day, and the IT industry is experiencing a major revolution," said OpenIO CEO and cofounder Laurent Denel in an Oct. 24 announcement. "Big data, IoT and machine learning applications are driving this transformation. At OpenIO, as we have solved the storage problem of massive amounts of data, and while much of the industry focuses on lower $/GB, we help businesses to create more value from their data." OpenIO isn't the data storage company to rake in funds this month. On Oct. 3, Infinidat announced it had raised $95 million in a Series C round of financing. The company, among the firms listed in Enterprise Storage Forum's Software-Defined Storage (SDS) Buying Guide, has raised $325 million and has shipped more than two exabytes of InfiniBox storage, Infinidat's flagship offering.

https://mobile.datamation.com/storage/openio-secures-5-million-in-vc-funding.html

Red Hat Positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of Gartner’s 2017 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Two Years in a Row

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- @RedHat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that @Gartner, Inc. has positioned Red Hat in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the 2017 Magic Quadrant for #DistributedFileSystems and #ObjectStorage for its storage solutions – Red Hat #Ceph Storage and Red Hat #Gluster Storage. Red Hat is the furthest to the right for completeness of vision and the highest in ability to execute of all vendors in the Visionary Quadrant. This is the second year in a row that Red Hat Storage has been placed in the Visionaries quadrant. .@redhatnews named a Visionary in @gartner_inc's #MagicQuadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object #Storage Tweet this Gartner’s Magic Quadrants are based on a rigorous analysis of a vendor’s completeness of vision and ability to execute. Developed to handle modern storage workloads and meet customer requests, Red Hat has made a number of investments in its storage products over the past year. New or updated storage capabilities include: Expanding container-native storage for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform across the hybrid cloud. Earlier this month, Red Hat unveiled Red Hat Container-Native Storage 3.6, which enables end-to-end storage for all core Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform applications and infrastructure. Release of Red Hat Ceph Storage 2.3 which increases the versatility of Ceph for object storage by broadening protocol support so that users can connect more effectively to and between traditional and modern workloads. Unveiling Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure, the industry’s only production-ready offering with an entirely open source infrastructure stack that is developed, sold and supported by a single vendor. Red Hat Ceph Storage and Red Hat Gluster Storage are both highly agile software-defined storage solutions that are built to handle different types of demanding workloads. Red Hat Ceph Storage is a robust, unified storage platform designed for object storage and cloud infrastructures at petabyte-scale. Red Hat Gluster Storage is a powerful distributed file system that offers flexible storage services across the data center's footprints – bare metal, virtual machines, private clouds, public clouds, and containerized environments. Both offerings can be deployed on industry-standard hardware. They are supported by an active community of open source developers and partners and used by companies around the world.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171023005815/en/Red-Hat-Positioned-Visionaries-Quadrant-Gartner%E2%80%99s-2017

Digital Ocean launches Spaces, its object storage service

#DigitalOcean today announced #Spaces, its object storage service. This complements the company’s block storage service. Both of these services have different use cases, of course; unlike the block storage service, Spaces — as an object store — can scale up far beyond the 16TB limit of the block storage service because it’s not volume-based and not about connecting storage to a virtual machine. For #DigitalOcean, this marks yet another expansion beyond its core #cloudcomputing service and shows the company’s ambition to more directly challenge large competitors like #Amazon, #Google and #Microsoft in this market (though those obviously still offer a far wider range of service than Digital Ocean). “Object storage has been one of the most requested products that we’ve been asked to build,” John Gannon, the company’s product manager for its cloud storage services, writes in today’s announcement. “When we embarked on developing a scalable storage product that is abstracted from compute resources, we realized we had an opportunity to refactor and improve how developers solve this problem today.” The company also notes that this service is compatible with many of the existing AWS S3 tools, and that all of the data sits on disks with 256-bit AES-XTS full-disk encryption. Developers also can encrypt their files with their own keys before uploading them, of course. Pricing for the service is pretty straightforward: you pay $5 per month with 250GB of storage and 1TB of outbound bandwidth included. Beyond that, you pay $0.02 per GB stored and $0.01 per GB transferred. Digital Ocean also is offering a free two-month trial for developers who want to kick the service’s tires. Spaces is now available in the company’s NYC3 region and will arrive in the AMS3 region before the end of the year, with more regions following in early 2018.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/20/digital-ocean-launches-spaces-its-object-storage-service/

Object -- Just Another Storage Technology or a New Business Proposition?

“ #DataTsunami ” is a trite expression meant to convey to enterprise IT a sense or impending doom. If you as an IT executive fail to manage it, unnamed bad things will happen – like maybe you’ll drown? But the Tsunami is here and now and so too is enterprise IT. They keep their ships afloat—precisely because they’ve come up with the means to manage. One of those coping mechanisms is a technology called #ObjectStorage. IT deals with two general categories of data: structured and unstructured. Transactional data resides in a structured database while unstructured data—document and image files for example—are managed by file systems. Unstructured data volumes grow four to five times faster. Just after the turn of the present century it became apparent that enterprise storage arrays, straining to cope with the growth of unstructured data, would not be able to do two very essential things: scale to the capacities required while protecting from data lost due to equipment failure. #Objectstorage was created for large scale coupled with data resiliency and is used extensively in #hyperscale data centers ( #Amazon, #Google, #Facebook, etc.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwebster/2017/08/25/object-just-another-storage-technology-or-a-new-business-proposition/#3a9117532c89

Tintri Extends its Enterprise Cloud Platform to Amazon Web Services and IBM Cloud Object Storage

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#Tintri, Inc. ( #NASDAQ: #TNTR), today announced the extension of its enterprise cloud platform to #AmazonWebServices and #IBM #CloudObjectStorage. Tintri Cloud Connector enables organizations to integrate their on-premises Tintri enterprise cloud infrastructure with #AWS and IBM cloud resources to create hybrid cloud services with building blocks from both #enterprisecloud and #publiccloud. “With Tintri, organizations can build enterprise cloud with autonomous operation, real-time and predictive analytics, automation, self-service, and tight connection to public cloud such as Amazon Web Services—benefiting from the best of both worlds” Tintri also announced updates to its platform that add predictive analytics for both compute and storage with a powerful machine learning engine, increase the scale of enterprise cloud up to 480,000 virtual machines and 40PB of primary storage, offer between 10X-30X acceleration of storage live migration, and extend support for cloud infrastructure-as-a-service with robust multitenant quota capabilities. Organizations use Tintri enterprise cloud platform as a foundation for their private clouds—to guarantee the performance of their applications, automate common IT tasks to reduce operating expenses, troubleshoot across compute, storage and network, predict their organization’s needs to scale and provide needed elasticity on demand. Tintri enterprise cloud already offers autonomous services, rapid elasticity or expansion, automation, and resource pooling—defined as key attributes of cloud according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Tintri Cloud Connector Tintri Cloud Connector tightly integrates enterprise cloud based on Tintri with AWS and IBM cloud resources, creating the foundation for hybrid cloud services. For example, customers can use AWS for the data protection, archive, and disaster recovery of their mission critical on-premises applications and restore applications and data in a single click to their Tintri Enterprise Cloud. Tintri Cloud Connector uses the Tintri CONNECT architecture which abstracts storage at the VM and container level for fastest recovery times and maximum flexibility. “ESG's preliminary analysis shows that organizations using Tintri's Enterprise Cloud solution with Tintri Cloud Connector can lower administrative costs by up to 72% compared to traditional LUN-based storage array with 3rd party or in-built cloud connector software,” said Aviv Kaufmann, Senior Economic Validation Analyst at ESG. “Tintri Cloud Connector accomplishes this by efficiently moving per-VM level data to and from AWS or IBM Cloud Object Storage with in-built compression, deduplication, and zero detection for virtualized and cloud workloads. With Tintri, Enterprises can lower cloud storage and data egress costs up to an estimated 80% and get up to a 4X lower RPO/RTO.” “We have worked closely with Tintri over the last several years and we share the common goal of providing customers with solutions aimed at delivering all the benefits the cloud offers,” said Mike Clayville, Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Sales & Business Development, Amazon Web Services, Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN). “We’re pleased that our joint customers can take advantage of Tintri Enterprise Cloud for their on-premises applications while at the same time rely on AWS for the protection, archive and recovery of these applications.” Compute Analytics Tintri Analytics, powered by Apache Spark, Elasticsearch and machine learning algorithms, uses the real-time VM and container-level data points that Tintri collects natively to enable powerful predictive analytics and planning capabilities. The analytics engine collects and analyzes up to three years of historical data from up to millions of VMs, and applies algorithms to predict resource needs up to 18 months into the future. With this new release, Tintri Analytics adds compute analytics to its existing storage predictive analytics planning capabilities which provide end-to-end view of infrastructure. Tintri Analytics will provide compute trending based on historical data, and will help users predict how much storage and compute they need based on current growth trends and what-if simulations of new projects. Enterprise Cloud Scale and Agility Tintri supports up to 64 Tintri storage systems under a single pane of glass with its Tintri Global Center management product. Customers can scale their enterprise cloud from 17 TB up to 40 PB of Tintri storage and manage up to 480,000 virtual machines or containers in a single management console. Tintri multitenancy support now includes hard quotas for logical capacity for multiple tenants in an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environment, including tenant separation, data encryption, service assurance and per-VM analytics for chargeback. Tintri VM Scale-out software allows customers to create and manage loosely coupled pools of storage for their virtualized and cloud applications. Built-in machine learning algorithms provide automated QoS and are designed to ensure that every application performs as desired. With this release, VM Scale-out adds array offloading of storage live migration for both vSphere and Hyper-V. Migrating running applications between Tintri storage arrays is up to 10X-30X faster than with other platforms, reducing the largest migrations from hours to minutes, eliminating load on compute hosts, and saving up to 95% or more of the bandwidth required to migrate applications between arrays. “With these announcements, Tintri provides a leap forward in enterprise cloud scale, agility, and end-to-end predictive capabilities and enables customers to unify their enterprise cloud and public cloud resources,” said Kieran Harty, Tintri’s CTO and co-founder. “With Tintri, organizations can build enterprise cloud with autonomous operation, real-time and predictive analytics, automation, self-service, and tight connection to public cloud such as Amazon Web Services—benefiting from the best of both worlds”. “What has always made Tintri unique is the way they do everything at the VM and container-level, which provides the right level of abstraction that is so central to cloud,” said Charles Ferland, System Administrator at La Capitale. “Whether it’s backing up data on premise or to public cloud, getting predictive insights, or creating automated policy-based QoS, the VM-level operation just makes everything so much easier and more efficient. Many people think it’s hard to get the benefits of public cloud in their own data center. We have basically done that with Tintri enterprise cloud.” Availability Tintri Analytics with Compute Analytics, Tintri Storage File System 4.4, and Tintri Global Center 3.6 will be available in Q3 of Tintri’s 2018 fiscal year to new Tintri customers and existing Tintri customers with a current Tintri support contract. Tintri VM Scale-out software with array offloading will be available in Q3 of Tintri’s 2018 fiscal year to new customers and existing customers licensed for the Tintri Software Suite or Tintri Global Center Advanced with a current Tintri support contract. Tintri Cloud Connector will be available in Q3 of Tintri’s 2018 fiscal year as part of Tintri Software Suite or as an a-la-carte software offering.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170816005544/en/Tintri-Extends-Enterprise-Cloud-Platform-Amazon-Web

The object storage market is moving beyond the cloud to the enterprise

As #objectstorage benefits become more enticing to enterprises for internal storage uses and not just for cloud, vendors are overcoming its drawbacks. Since it was first conceived in the mid-1990s, object storage has grown to be one of the largest methods of storing data in use today. The development and commercialization of object storage happened nearly in lockstep with the technology industry that is still its primary user by far, the cloud. Recent advances and shifts in data storage technology have IT buyers wondering if enterprise object storage could become as common as cloud object storage.

Object storage was developed by academic and business researchers to be able to handle what they could see coming down the highway -- a more rapidly increasing amount of digital information that would need to be stored somewhere. So the goal of object storage, right out of the gate, was storage that was less expensive to run and expand. Object storage achieved the first goal by eliminating the need to address every single block of writeable space in the storage medium individually, which is necessary in file and block storage. That allowed more of the medium itself to be used to actually hold data, not information about how to find that data.

The second goal was realized by eliminating any hierarchical structure of folders and treating the storage as a flat address space or a storage pool. This made it easier for the storage to expand as more data made it necessary. Picture an object storage pool as an enormous wading pool that can be added on to in any dimension. The water -- or data, in this metaphor -- simply flows into the expanded space.

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Is-enterprise-object-storage-ready-to-lead

IBM Simplifies Object Storage for Cisco Customers

LAS VEGAS, June 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at #CiscoLive, #Cisco 's annual IT and communications conference, #IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that companies using Cisco #UCS servers can now manage their data intensive workloads securely and efficiently on-premises with the IBM #CloudObjectStorage (COS) System, now available as a #VersaStack Solution for Cloud Object Storage. This pre-validated, tested and supported solution is designed to offer modern, flexible storage for unstructured data for use cases such as active archive, backup, content repository, enterprise collaboration and cloud application development. Businesses rely on a variety of storage architectures, including file and block storage for traditional workloads and performance-centric applications. Today's organizations are increasingly adding object storage for its massive scalability, cost efficiency and ability to manage rich, user-definable metadata. IBM and Cisco have collaborated to simplify and speed object storage adoption for customers with the VersaStack Solution for Cloud Object Storage. The combination of the Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server, C220 Rack Servers and Cisco Nexus 9K switches with IBM Cloud Object Storage System is ideal for data intensive workloads, supporting IT organizations with an easily scalable solution. Customers can use their same on-premises Cisco hardware and server management tools to add IBM Cloud Object Storage to their current IT environments, allowing them to manage their data – from petabyte to exabyte scale – with reliability, security, availability and disaster recovery – all without replication. This new offering will modernize storage access, so that when clients are ready to extend their workloads into a hybrid cloud storage environment, the processing and tools are already in place for them to use their IBM Cloud Object Storage software, in either a private or hybrid cloud environment. "The growth of unstructured data in the enterprise is driving the need for a highly scalable, cost effective storage architecture," said Satinder Sethi, vice president, data center solutions, Cisco. "Cisco UCS S-Series Storage Servers are built to deliver rapid scalability and performance coupled with maximum investment protection through multi-generational system design. Cisco is collaborating with IBM to extend VersaStack with a new cloud object storage solution, that is built on UCS S3260 storage server, 40G fabric and IBM Cloud Object Storage that can scale from terabytes to petabytes in minutes." IBM Cloud Object Storage redefines the availability, security and economics of data storage, requiring less storage, power, floor space, personnel and cost than traditional storage options. It complements IBM's high and medium-performance flash and disk storage options, available for Cisco customers via IBM VersaStack, by providing a different kind of storage environment – one that is built for cloud native applications; unstructured data like video, audio, image and documents; and archive and other data protection needs. IBM takes a "software-defined/hardware-aware" approach to object storage. IBM Cloud Object Storage provides information about the status of both the logical and physical elements of the system in one view. This includes statistics on the health of disk drives, fans, NICs and the temperature of major system components. Intelligence delivered in the IBM COS Manager makes it easy for a single administrator to manage 10s of petabytes of storage, which can significantly lower the total cost of ownership for large scale object storage systems. "At IBM, we want to make it easy for organizations to adapt their IT environments when business needs change," said Phil Buckellew, general manager, IBM Cloud Object Storage. "Providing IBM Cloud Object Storage for Cisco hardware customers does just that – it allows them to use their existing investments to gain massive scalability for large volumes of data or changing business needs, with the option to extend into the IBM Cloud if and when it makes sense for them." The VersaStack Solution for Cloud Object Storage is backed by a Cisco Validated Design (CVD), which provides guidance on design and deployment of the solution, enabling Cisco customers and channel resellers to repeat the successful approaches they have taken with other Cisco validated solutions and seamlessly add object storage to their IT tool kit. It also simplifies the integration process for Cisco customers, who can now use their existing Cisco purchasing agreements and support structure to implement a flexible IBM Cloud Object Storage environment. The VersaStack Solution for Cloud Object Storage is available now, joining a growing family of VersaStack solutions jointly developed by IBM and Cisco. VersaStack solutions now have 19 validations (combined CVDs and Redbooks), enabling IBM and Cisco's joint customers to address a wide range of workloads and use cases.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-simplifies-object-storage-for-cisco-customers-300479431.html

IBM Accelerates Hybrid-Cloud Adoption with New All-Flash Mainframe Storage Solutions

ARMONK, N.Y., June 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: #IBM) today announced a new hybrid-cloud, all-flash family of storage solutions for mainframe users, which helps automate the movement of data to and from the cloud. With hybrid-cloud storage capabilities IBM z Systems clients now have a new level of control to store their data where it makes the best economic and business sense. Beyond automating the movement of data to and from the cloud, these solutions can provide savings in CPU costs and utilization. When archiving large data sets, having a cloud tier of storage frees the CPU for new workloads such as Cognitive and Machine Learning. Larger volumes of more complex data have put an emphasis on archiving and backup tasks in IBM z Systems environments, which in turn is consuming more resources and higher percentage of IT budgets. By making the cloud available as another storage tier, the new DS8880 Transparent Cloud Tiering feature provides multiple options for reducing backup and archiving costs and complexity. The IBM DS8880F with Transparent Cloud Tiering also integrates with IBM Cloud Object Storage to provide a foundation object storage layer for on-premises private cloud implementations or to be used to build off-premises object stores using public cloud resources. The Transparent Cloud Tiering feature can also provide direct connectivity to IBM Bluemix Infrastructure public cloud storage resources for clients who want to build hybrid cloud solutions that leverage the advantages of multiple architectures on-site and in the cloud. Transparent Cloud Tiering leverages existing #DS8880 infrastructure through a microcode upgrade and software license activation with no additional hardware required. It uses the existing Ethernet ports; includes encryption, auditing, and security features; and supports #IBM #Bluemix, IBM #CloudObjectStorage, #OpenStack #Swift and #Amazon #S3 Object Store connectivity.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-accelerates-hybrid-cloud-adoption-with-new-all-flash-mainframe-storage-solutions-300476399.html

Integrate Ceph object storage in a VMware vSphere environment

It can be challenging to integrate #Ceph in a #VMware environment, but with the right interface, #vSphere administrators can reap the rewards of #objectstorage. The benefits of object storage are numerous: Its modular design makes it highly resilient, and its flat structure makes it easy to use. It's able to scale to petabytes of data -- which makes it a good option for public storage -- and that level of scalability makes it more affordable than traditional block- and file-based storage. Based on these benefits, it's no wonder the open source world has taken an interest in object storage, with Red Hat Ceph leading the pack.

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/Integrate-Ceph-object-storage-in-a-VMware-vSphere-environment

Latest Red Hat Ceph Storage Release Expands Versatility as Object Store

#RedHat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced Red Hat #Ceph Storage 2.3. This release, based on Ceph 10.2 ( #Jewel ), introduces a new Network File System ( #NFS ) interface, offers new compatibility with the #Hadoop #S3A filesystem client, and adds support for deployment in containerized environments. These improvements expand the product’s versatility as an #objectstorage platform, offering the ability to support big data analytics and serve as a common platform for file-based workloads. This release marks the latest milestone in Red Hat’s mission to provide highly elastic, flexible storage that can be optimized to suit a variety of workloads across any size of enterprise deployment.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170606005523/en/Latest-Red-Hat-Ceph-Storage-Release-Expands

What’s Next for Big Data? Thinking Beyond Hadoop with Elastic Object Storage

In the last decade, some enterprises struggling with growing data volumes and shrinking big data talent pools, saw public cloud as a way to manage both challenges. Creating a data lake in the public cloud — just pouring all the unstructured data into a single massive collection, then using analytics tools to “fish out” the data a business unit needs — initially seemed like a good idea because it was the least path of resistance. However, that solution, as frequently happens, carried the seeds of its own problems. Storing big data in the public cloud makes it expensive for users, because while sending data to the cloud can be expensive, pulling it out is even more costly. If they try to avoid this by expanding their on-premise #Hadoop compute resources by buying more Hadoop data nodes, they incur higher costs by over-provisioning on their compute resources

Companies have discovered the notion of “data gravity.” As the quantity of data grows, there’s more inertia; it’s harder and more expensive to pull out of the cloud, and as it goes through different iterations and transformations it changes. As such, organizations are trying to avoid having to move data after it’s been stored. They want it to be “hot” from an analytics perspective, then “cold” from a storage perspective. Unfortunately traditional Hadoop deployments don’t give them that flexibility.

In addition, having many smaller data “swamps” only compounds the problem. Users end up with “Hadoop sprawl,” buying and managing many different Hadoop clusters specialized to handle different kinds of analytics – again, incurring high costs, with the added complications of the rigidity of the multiple hardwired clusters and frequent duplication of the data.

Thus, we’re seeing increased demand for open software-defined storage (SDS) that helps to decouple compute and storage, and to reduce Hadoop sprawl. Using SDS — such as the open source object  store Red Hat Ceph Storage — on-premise keeps the data stationary and brings analytics to the data. Being able to use analytics tools and frameworks of choice is extremely important to data scientists who want to use the latest toys available to them, while also keeping their skills razor sharp. Public cloud just can’t keep pace with all the innovation happening in the area of analytics frameworks.

Data can be directly ingested into #SDS solutions from many different data sources, or from a single virtualized data source. The analytics tools, whether #Hadoop or non-Hadoop, are onsite. Customers control the determination of which data streams are higher or lower business value; this way, what one department considers high value can flow to its SDS cluster, while a different department, that places greater value on other data, flows it into its cluster.

The advantages to this approach show up in several ways. The total cost of ownership is lower – no hardwired Hadoop clusters, no data in transit to analytics tools because the tools are in situ, and no overcapacity on compute resources. Companies avoid being locked in, dependent on a single vendor. Furthermore, this approach is flexible and scalable, with the ability to easily support web-scale Big Data analytics projects.

Being able to leverage the industry standard S3A interface helps data scientists connect any analytics tools with an object store natively, allowing for better performance and near linear scale of object storage.

Many companies want self-service analytics on-premise, with the same kind of ease-of-use interface provided by public clouds. The combination of open source SDS with the S3A interface addresses this desire while eliminating the need to blindly go fishing for data.

http://insidebigdata.com/2017/05/26/whats-next-big-data-thinking-beyond-hadoop-elastic-object-storage/

Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage S3 Backup Target for IBM Spectrum Protect 3.x

#DellEMC® #ElasticCloudStorage ( #ECS™) is a #softwaredefined, #cloudscale, #objectstorage platform that combines the cost advantages of commodity infrastructure with the reliability, availability and serviceability of traditional arrays. With ECS, any organization can deliver scalable and simple public cloud services with the reliability and control of a private-cloud infrastructure. ECS provides comprehensive protocol support for unstructured (Object and File) workloads on a single, cloud-scale storage platform. With ECS, you can easily manage your globally distributed storage infrastructure under a single global namespace with anywhere access to content. ECS features a flexible software-defined architecture that is layered to promote limitless scalability. Each layer is completely abstracted and independently scalable with high availability and no single points of failure. Any organization can now realize true cloud-scale economics in their own data centers. #IBM #Spectrum Protect can leverage it's support for the #AWS #S3 API to support using Dell EMC ECS as a backup target.

http://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=54323&expand=true&lc=en

IT firm gets Scality object storage to boost S3-based offerings

The deployment of #objectstorage has allowed it to make savings of 90% in terms of total cost of ownership, the company said. #BlueChip operates from three datacentres in Uxbridge, Poole and Leeds and has around 400 customers that range from small to medium-sized enterprises. It offers file hosting, managed IT and cloud services based on its #HP, #Cisco and #EMC hardware infrastructure. #Scality

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450419552/IT-firm-gets-Scality-object-storage-too-boost-S3-based-offerings

Nexenta NexentaEdge 2.0 offers scale-out software-defined storage platform on any hardware interface

#Nexenta introduced Thursday the latest version of its scale-out block, file, and object storage platform, NexentaEdge. Purpose-built for enterprise IT environment with rapidly expanding application needs, NexentaEdge 2.0 is a flexible and future proof multi-service storage platform. NexentaEdge 2.0 delivers multi-service scale-out platform delivering iSCSI block, NFS file and S3 and Swift object services; comes in a simple to manage web-based GUI for daily management and service provisioning; includes patent-pending Quick Erasure Coding technology, manage both active and cold object archives with storage speed and efficiency; and deliver superior data protection with cluster-wide inline deduplication, compression and unlimited snapshots/clones. The new offering delivers scale-out platform for Docker Container-Converged infrastructure with seamless integration with Docker Universal Control Plane for single pane of glass management of containerized applications; includes high performance, all-flash deployment profiles with support for SSD SATA, SAS and NVMe-based storage SSDs; and offers shared namespace between File and Object Storage.

http://wwpi.com/2017/05/05/nexenta-nexentaedge-2-0-offers-scale-out-software-defined-storage-platform-on-any-hardware-interface/

Datanauts 078: Object Storage & The OpenIO Project

Today on the #Datanauts it’s #objectstorage. Object storage is easily accessible, highly scalable, and underpins many cloud and online applications and services. Our guest sailor across the sea of object storage is Enrico Signoretti, head of product strategy at #OpenIO and a well-known analyst and blogger at Juku. Enrico and the Datanauts will talk about the object storage format, how it differs from block and file storage, how it scales in performance and capacity, and use cases where it does (and doesn’t) make sense. We’ll also talk about OpenIO, an #opensource project that develops software-defined storage ( #SDS ). OpenIO also offers a commercially supported version of its SDS software. Last but not least, we discuss Enrico’s work in the technology community, including blogging, open source, and his past work with the TECHUnplugged organization

http://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/datanauts-078-object-storage-openio-project/