Software Defined Storage (SDS) - What is software defined storage?
In recent years, users have increasingly sought software-defined storage solutions and hyperconverged storage devices to create a high-performance, fault-tolerant IT infrastructure.
Comprehensive software-defined storage solutions for virtual machines and applications (Software Defined Storage), provide high performance and fault tolerance. One of the ways used is to create so-called "data mirroring" (data mirroring) of internal hard drives and flash drives between servers, eliminating the need for shared physical storage. With Defined Storage Software's solution, CAPEX and OPEX expenses are significantly reduced because readily available components are used. The SDS data storage solution is particularly suited to the needs of SME companies and remote offices.
To ensure minimal downtime and high availability of applications and services (High Availability), a ProActive-type service is often added , consisting of a combination of analytics and real-time monitoring. Advanced software components predict the occurrence of failures and prevent them before they happen. This makes it possible to meet even the most stringent requirements of service level agreements. As a result, system administrators using Software Defined Storage can focus on innovating instead of constantly monitoring the IT environment.
Virtualization as a core element of SDS
Software Defined Storage is a collection of technologies, and virtualization is one of its core elements . In Software Defined Storage services(deduplication, replication, caching, compression, etc.), the operating system and applications run in virtual machines and must run in conjunction with them. This guarantees more efficient use of available resources, while the VMs themselves retain their mobility within the scope of the data center. A solution designed at the virtual machine level also gives significantly more flexibility in terms of adapting the entire environment to changing requirements, for example, when adding more components.
Hybrid Cloud in SDS solutions
Software Defined Storage solutions are often extended with hybrid cloud functionality. Current hybrid cloud solutions on the market require the creation of a new hardware configuration from scratch, which is time-consuming and costly. They also do not provide sufficiently high availability for VMs and applications, as they do not allow data migration between the public cloud and local storage.
Such a solution, which is a combination of the Hyper-V ecosystem and existing on-premises servers using Microsoft Azure, may be the answer to these challenges. In addition to distributing highly available storage, Software Defined Storage also provides inter-site data replication and recovery in the public cloud, meeting Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) requirements. As a result, this leads to simplified deployment and management, reducing costs and increasing the security of stored data (data storage).
Advantages of Software Defined Storage
The main advantages of Software Defined Storage (SDS) over a physical SAN with an array are directly influencing the increasingly popular use of SDS solutions, these include:
- Performance: latency is higher due to accessing drives over the network rather than locally, no caching
- Redundancy: the SAN can be a single point of failure if the SAN device fails, the entire environment fails
- High Availability: SAN array with 2 controllers (quite expensive) works in static active-active mode, as opposed to a software solution working in true dynamic active-active mode
- Scalability: Guaranteed to support unlimited capacity in HA mode, using an unlimited time license. This means that you can increase/scale by adding disk shelves when all bays/bays are already full at no additional software cost. In addition, SAN components typically need to be replaced after 3-5 years, while the software license is perpetual.
An example of software-defined storage is the Linux and ZFS-based Open-E JovianDSS file system. Learn more about this solution.