The Business ChallengeData is growing at an accelerating rate and is expected to explode from 4.4 zettabytes in 2013 to 180 zettabytes in 2025—the vast majority of this data is expected to be unstructured. This massive growth in data is characterized by both diversity and complexity of data types. Traditional scale-up NAS systems, with limited throughput and complex configuration requirements, lack the flexibility to address this new reality. Once scale-up capacity and performance ceilings are reached, forklift upgrades are required, creating NAS sprawl, underutilized assets and complex management. As a result, scale-out storage solutions are required due to their flexible performance and capacity, seamless upgrades and investment protection.

Data Management has Become Increasingly DifficultBesides the very real problems of ongoing capacity expansion needs, enterprises also face a multitude of challenges around management of the data and of storage systems. Traditional storage vendors are saddled with the burdens of legacy architectures that are inherently complex to manage. As such, storage management has become a specialized niche for many IT staffers that are tasked with maintaining an organization’s entire IT assets, often diverting time to unnecessary tasks while delaying business-facing organizational goals.

StorageCraft SolutionThe revolutionary architecture delivers the most useful end-user features, designed from the ground-up and integrated into a single product. StorageCraft's solution delivers:

• Seamless scale-out capacity, performance, and availability, allowing “pay-as-you-grow”

• Inline variable-length deduplication and compression to maximize storage utilization

• Continuous snapshots to provide granular file level recovery up to the last few seconds

• Local fail over enabling continuous information availability

• Multi-site remote replication across distributed locations for disaster recovery

To bring a new level of flexibility and control to storage, StorageCraft identified, envisioned, and built a storage management solution that delivers:

• Intuitive and graphical ease of use

• Accessibility from anywhere via cloud-based management

• Proactive problem diagnostics, monitoring, and reporting

• Near zero configuration for common storage management tasks

The end result of this effort is a powerful, yet simple, storage management appliance, OneBlox®, coupled with a cloud-based management service, OneSystem®. In fact, the OneBlox and OneSystem combination is so intuitive that a typical IT staff person can have their first node up and running in just 15 minutes. That simplicity in management is coupled with a powerful feature set unmatched by other enterprise storage products.

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WHITE PAPER

OneBlox and OneSystem Technical Overview

The StorageCraft Ecosystem and ComponentsStorageCraft has built, from the ground up, a brand new and unique storage system. StorageCraft has developed a highly scalable, flexible scale-out storage platform based on a modern object storage architecture with plug-and-play application compatibility. Its unique filesystem design is based on objects that can be stored in highly scalable, location independent, flat key-value stores. It is a true shared-nothing architecture, with each OneBlox node only maintaining a map of what its own content and its place in the system. StorageCraft’s distributed file system provides universal data access by presenting a SMB or NFS file share(s) to users and applications. The architecture enables non-disruptive scaling of performance and capacity by adding additional nodes in a cluster with zero configuration requirements. By bringing next generation distributed content addressable object storage together with a traditional file system, the solution delivers unmatched scalability and compatibility. Because of its unique file-on-object technology, StorageCraft inherently offers many value-added features including inline deduplication, compression, continuous data protection, multi-site bi-directional replication for DR, and seamless scalability.

StorageCraft provides organizations with massively scalable storage with enterprise-class features and single-instance cloud management that brings the entire environment under a single administrative umbrella, regardless of how large it ultimately grows.

OneBlox 5210OneBlox 5210 is an all-flash appliance that is 1U with 10 hot swappable 2.5” SATA/SAS SSDs. Currently supporting up to 3.84TB SSDs, organizations can configure a cluster with up to 280TB of raw capacity, before any data reduction. Additionally, when larger SSDs become available (e.g., 8TB and 16TB), organizations can add the new SSDs to the existing cluster, non-disruptively. With each OneBlox supporting 4 x 10GbE (SFP+ or BASE-T) and 2 x 1GbE, it enables organizations to start with only the current capacity requirements and scale-out over time.

OneBlox 4312OneBlox 4312 is a 2U appliance that provides 12 hot-swappable 3.5” hard drive slots and scales up to 96 TB of raw capacity when each slot is outfitted with 8 TB drives. In order to meet the unique performance goals across a variety of use cases, the OneBlox appliance supports the use either of SATA and SAS disk drives. Drive capacities can be mixed within a given OneBlox or within a cluster. Each OneBlox appliance connects to the network with 2 x 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports and/or 2 x 1GbE ports. With OneBlox, customers can start small and grow as the need arises. Unlike other scale-out architectures, StorageCraft initial deployments can be as small as a single node, and allow for node-by-node expansion, with no downtime and zero-configuration.

OneBlox ClusterScalability is in the StorageCraft DNA. Customers can begin with as few as three drives, and seamlessly expand from there. Customers can connect many OneBlox together to form a cluster (also called a Ring), which presents a single file system or up to 100 individual file systems/shares to applications and users. In other words, this multi-node cluster appears as a single, global, pool of storage which is seen by users as a coherent file sharing device, and which is managed by

OneBlox 5210

OneBlox 4312

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administrators as a single collection of file systems. As new appliances are added to a ring, behind-the-scenes data protection technology kicks in to automatically spread data among the various nodes in order to protect the environment in the event of a hardware failure. This data protection technology works through local replication, with redundant copies of all data stored in various locations in the cluster to achieve the optimal protection levels.

Mesh Configuration and Remote ReplicationA Mesh is a configuration of two or more clusters connected with each other for replication services. Data protection in the event of a site failure is critical to many organizations. However, many organizations have shied away (except for data that is deemed extremely critical) due to implementation complexity and cost. Through the use of a mesh configuration, customers can setup two or more clusters to automatically replicate data to one another, all behind the scenes. The Mesh and corresponding replication services can be configured through a simple, intuitive workflow in just 3 steps. This allows disaster recovery implementation to be easily accessible.

OneSystemInstead of relying on the traditional storage management paradigm, the entire OneBlox ecosystem— the appliance, rings, and meshes—are managed from a central, cloud-based management service. OneSystem is simple and intuitive, from initial storage configuration to ongoing management. No matter where customers are, they are able to access the web-based OneSystem. With many existing storage management solutions, an administrator has to dig through multiple screens of information in an attempt to figure out how much space is left in the environment and whether or not there are any alarms that require immediate resolution. OneSystem, on the other hand, puts all the pertinent information right in front of the administrator.

OneSystem can also seamlessly integrate with an on-premises Active Directory (AD) environment. This allows an administrator to leverage existing assets, which further simplifies the administrative experience.

When a new OneBlox appliance is deployed, it connects to OneSystem to announce its availability. From there, an administrator logs in to OneSystem and, using details that helpfully appear on the local OneBlox web console, pairs the appliance with OneSystem. The entire process takes mere minutes and once accomplished, the full administrative experience becomes available to the administrator. The use of both a username and password to log in to OneSystem and a unique pairing code provides multifactor security to keep the data safe.

Distributed Content Addressable Object-based File SystemThe primary design goals for StorageCraft was to deliver a storage system with simplicity, scalability, data protection and performance.

To achieve the stated goals of the OneBlox system, StorageCraft has created a groundbreaking new file system layered on top of objects stored in a location independent key-value store. OneBlox’s object-based file system handles all aspects of data management, including protecting all storage in a number of ways. OneBlox protects against:

• Data corruption or accidental deletion

• Drive removal and failure

• Appliance failure

• Ring failure

• Bit rot

• Ransomware

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StorageCraft’s vision required the design and implementation of many enterprise-class storage features better than those features found in traditional storage systems, while providing an extremely easy-to-use solution for the IT administrator. As such, significant engineering has gone into building world-class features for organizations more interested in solving business problems than in fighting with storage.

StorageCraft’s distributed file system is built on top of a fine-grained content-addressable distributed object store with a hashed ring architecture that has small but variable sized immutable objects as its foundation. The OneBlox object store is able to store and manage over a billion small objects per node. Its peer-to-peer architecture eliminates the scalability bottlenecks of traditional clustered architectures where metadata servers must be relied on for data placement and lookup decisions that can create significant bottlenecks. The optimized coupling between the distributed file system and object access layer allow support of all NAS workloads, including small files, millions of files in a single directory and random I/O requirements. Its dynamic hashing and placement algorithms allow it to spread data across the nodes optimally to avoid I/O bottlenecks and support nodes with heterogeneous capacities while allowing it to survive multiple node failures.

To maintain performance levels that are necessary for large amounts of data, each node maintains its object metadata in an index stored on a solid state disk (SSD) which is built into each OneBlox. With OneBlox 5210, the metadata is spread across all of the SSDs.

The Global Pool of StorageAll filesystems created within a OneBlox cluster have equal access to a global pool of storage and is the single presentation of the OneBlox environment to the applications and users. With the OneBlox, administrators do not create traditional RAID-based storage volumes, LUNs, and aggregates—nor does the OneBlox filesystem use RAID for data protection. As storage capacities have grown, RAID has proven to be the Achilles’ Heel for many, as rebuild times in the event of a disk failure grow longer, increasing the potential for data loss.

Instead, OneBlox uses a comprehensive replication engine and other features, including Continuous Data Protection (CDP), to protect data and to present to users a single, unified view of the storage environment.

SMB and NFSOneBlox runs the Microsoft Windows-standard SMB and Unix NFS file server protocols as microservices on top of its distributed object-store and export file shares via the OneBlox cluster. This enables immediate access to OneBlox shares from Windows-, Linux-, and Mac-based systems including VMware and Hyper-V virtual servers. With OneBlox’s architecture, there is no limitation on the size of a given VMware NFS datasore or Microsoft VHD, it can be the size of the entire cluster. Additionally, OneBlox provides OneSystem with the ability for administrators to authenticate with Active Directory environments so that existing user accounts can be used for OneBlox access. This negates the need to maintain a separate user directory in OneSystem if users elect to use Active Directory. Local Replication Replication is the cornerstone of StorageCraft’s data protection strategy

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and is used from single appliances all the way up interconnected meshes. In fact, data protection is so critical in the StorageCraft vision that, by design, multiple copies of data are always kept, but the exact process of object placement depends on the failure domains defined by OneBlox nodes and Rings within the environment:

• Single node. OneBlox 4312 creates three replicated copies of the information, and OneBlox 5210 creates two local replicated copies, on the single node across multiple drives, which protects against the loss of up to two physical hard drives in the appliance

• Multi-node clusters. OneBlox leverages all nodes in the ring as replication targets, enabling a scenario in which two nodes can fail in a OneBlox 4312 cluster, or a single OneBlox 5210, and users will still have access to their information.

Inline Variable-length Deduplication and Compression

When data is replicated, as is the case with OneBlox, additional capacity is required to store that replicated data. However, to maximize the overall usable capacity of a OneBlox appliance or ring, StorageCraft has implemented a powerful inline deduplication scheme (variable and fixed length) along with compression. Each time data is added to a OneBlox ring, it checks to see if that data already exists in the environment. If it does, the new data is simply discarded and a pointer to the original copy of the data is stored instead, which uses just a fraction of the storage that would otherwise be used. If a segment of the data is unique, it is compressed and then written to the cluster.

In a legacy storage environment, deduplication is often disabled and not used for primary storage due to the processing overhead that is introduced inside these legacy environments. With OneBlox, deduplication is always on since it is integral part of the read/write workflow within the system.

Continuous Data Protection Through Snapshots

Although fast disk-based technologies have been available for many years, many companies will rely on backup to keep long-term archives of their critical business data. Most often, these backup windows take place over night. Unfortunately, this creates a significant possibility of data loss in the organization if, for example, a data loss event takes place at the end of a workday. In this case, all of the work performed since the most recent backup—which took place in the wee hours of the morning—is lost.

OneBlox provides a powerful data recovery feature known as Continuous Data Protection (CDP). Throughout the day, OneBlox continuously takes snapshots (every 10 seconds) of new data written in the filesystem and \ keeps those snapshots as recovery points in the event of data loss, which could be something as simple as an accidentally deleted file or as complex as being attacked by Ransomware. This unlimited snapshot-based approach to Continuous Data Protection minimizes the data loss window, enabling much faster recovery in the event of a serious data loss issue. On the surface, it might seem that the snapshots feature could use massive amounts of disk space. Thanks to OneBlox’s deduplication, snapshots use only a fraction of the space that they otherwise would, enabling very granular data recovery at a minuscule cost of storage capacity consumption. All snapshots are deduplicated against the primary data.

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In a “keeping IT focused on the business” theme, these snapshots are actually available to users who can access them through Windows previous version, Windows Explorer, or Mac Finder and recover older versions of their own files without IT having to be involved. OneBlox provides the ability to go back to the last file written (which could be the last few seconds), as well as further back in time: the last minute, hour, day, week, month, or year(s).

Remote ReplicationSometimes, disaster strikes. Mother Nature has a knack for attacking without warning. To protect against site failures many companies deploy disaster recovery sites that are physically separated from the main data center.

For those concerned about potential site failure, a cluster, which can consist of multiple interconnected OneBlox, may be replicated to another OneBlox cluster or multiple clusters in multiple locations, bi-directionally, in what is known as a mesh. Only the changed, deduplicated and compressed objects are replicated on an ongoing basis across two or more (up to 10) clusters. In the event of one site going offline, users can access the replicated information from an alternate ring. OneBlox enables customers to build reliability and disaster recovery for a low price and without the cost and complexity that often plagues these implementations. Moreover, the network utilization is maximized because only the changed, deduplicated and compressed objects are replicated. Additionally, all information is encrypted in flight before being replicated. At any given time, only the primary share is read/write. The secondary replicas of the share are read-only. In the event of a failure, any read-only share can be ‘promoted’ to read/write in less than a minute and will have file system consistency to the latest recovery point. All of this is managed on a per-share basis that enables management flexibility by not requiring an all or nothing approach.

Capacity Expansion

No company is a static entity. Organizations grow and change every day and this growth becomes a part of the organization’s culture. Unfortunately, adding additional storage capacity with a legacy storage system is always an “event” that requires planned downtime and can carry with it the risk of an outage. There’s a much better way to handle capacity increases. Additional disk drives or OneBlox can be added with absolutely zero configuration to support an organization’s data growth. With OneBlox, there are three primary ways to add capacity with no downtime:

• Add new hard drives to empty slots in an existing OneBlox

• Upgrade existing hard drives in an existing appliance with drives of a higher capacity

• Add new OneBlox to an existing Ring

With legacy storage arrays, adding capacity often means buying an expensive shelf fully populated with hard drives even if just a few TB of extra capacity is needed. With OneBlox, if an appliance has available hard drive slots, an administrator can simply insert a new hard disk, of any capacity up to 8TB. OneBlox simply detects that a new drive has been added and works behind the scenes to integrate its capacity into the environment in a matter of minutes—zero configuration required.

If a customer wishes to upgrade the capacity of an existing appliance, OneSystem and OneBlox will handle

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the integration of the new capacity and the redistribution of existing data objects on the appliance and in the ring to achieve optimal protection levels. The additional capacity is dynamically pooled with the existing global storage pool and applications and users immediately have more capacity. With a traditional storage array, such a granular drive-by-drive addition or replacement process would be extremely tedious, and most likely not supported by the storage array vendor.

Scale-out FlexibilityAs more capacity or performance is needed in an environment, customers can simply add more OneBlox to an existing Ring and scale capacity, performance, and availability. As new devices are deployed, they are automatically discovered by OneSystem and are seamlessly added to the cluster. Similar to drive expansion, adding OneBlox to a ring requires zero configuration and no downtime. From a user perspective, the effective storage capacity and performance of the environment simply grows as new OneBlox are added. No changes to users or applications are required to take advantage of the additional capacity.

SummaryStorageCraft storage solution is powerful, simple, and protected. StorageCraft has completely reinvented the storage stack at the most fundamental levels. By abandoning legacy RAID concepts and traditional scale-up storage architectures, StorageCraft has incorporated best of breed ideas into a single integrated solution and management experience. StorageCraft is enabling organizations to solve complex business challenges with powerful, yet simple and elegant, storage.

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