Tag: Cloud Storage

Kubernetes is Everywhere Q&A

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Last month, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative hosted a fascinating panel discussion “Kubernetes is Everywhere: What About Cloud Native Storage?”  where storage experts from SNIA and Kubernetes experts from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) discussed storage implications for Kubernetes. It was a lively and enlightening discussion on key considerations for container storage. In this Q&A blog, our panelists Nick Connolly, Michael St-Jean, Pete Brey and I elaborate on some of the most intriguing questions during the session.

Q. What are the additional/different challenges for Kubernetes storage at the edge – in contrast to the data center?  

A. Edge means different things depending on context. It could mean enterprise or provider edge locations, which are typically characterized by smaller, compact deployments of Kubernetes. It could mean Kubernetes deployed on a single node at a site with little or no IT support, or even disconnected from the internet, on ships, oil rigs, or even in space for example. It can also mean device edge, like MicroShift running on a small form factor computer or within an ARM or FPGA card for example.

One big challenge for Kubernetes at the edge in general is to provide a lightweight deployment. Added components, like container-native storage, are required for many edge applications, but they take up resources. Therefore, the biggest challenge is to deploy the storage resources that are necessary for the workload, but at the same time, making sure your footprint is appropriate for the deployment infrastructure.  

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Kubernetes is Everywhere – What About Cloud Native Storage?

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Organizations are adopting containers at an increasingly rapid rate. In fact, there are few organizations that haven’t implemented containers in their environment today. DevOps teams expect a flexible, seamless development, deployment and orchestration experience. With platform agnostic capabilities and a stateless container design, Kubernetes streamlines these processes – and now, with the contribution of persistent, cloud native storage, stateful information becomes reality along with advanced storage capabilities including features such as snapshots, rollbacks, etc.

On July 19, 2022, storage implications for Kubernetes will be the topic of our SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) live webcast “Kubernetes is Everywhere – What About Cloud Native Storage?” where storage experts from SNIA and Kubernetes experts from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) will discuss:

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5G Industrial Private Networks and Edge Data Pipelines

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

The convergence of 5G, Edge Compute and Artificial Intelligence (AI) promise to be catalyst for continued digital transformation. For many industries, it will be a game-changer in term of how business in conducted. On January 27, 202, the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) will take on this topic at our live webcast “5G Industrial Private Networks and Edge Data Pipelines.”

Advanced 5G is specifically designed to address the needs of verticals with capabilities like enhanced mobile broadband (emBB), ultra-reliable low latency communications (urLLC), and massive machine type communications (mMTC), to enable near real-time distributed intelligence applications. For example, automated guided vehicle and autonomous mobile robots (AGV/AMRs), wireless cameras, augmented reality for connected workers, and smart sensors across many verticals ranging from healthcare and immersive media, to factory automation.

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A Q&A on Big Data in the Cloud

Chip Maurer Leave a comment

The title of our recent live SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies webcast, “Cloud Storage and Big Data, A Marriage Made in the Clouds” might lead you to believe we were producing a new reality show, but of course, that was not the case. This webcast with SNIA experts, Chip Maurer, Vincent Hsu and Andy Longworth examined modernization challenges related to Big Data and key considerations for storing Big Data as workloads evolve. Our audience asked great questions during the live event. As promised, here are our experts’ answers.

Q: Is there much movement with Open Source Object Storage solutions, such as OpenStack suite – Swift, etc?

A. Yes, there is no shortage of Open Source storage solutions. The decision depends upon your organization’s expertise, reliability, cost, application availability and location, and your overall storage strategy.

Q. What drives organizations to modernize?

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Why Use Multiple Clouds?

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

As storing data in the cloud has become ubiquitous and mature, many organizations have adopted a multi-cloud strategy. Eliminating dependence on a single cloud platform is quite a compelling case with benefits of increased reliability, availability, performance, and the avoidance of vendor lock-in and/or specific vendor vulnerabilities to name a few. In short, spanning multiple clouds ensures a business does not have all its eggs (i.e. data) in one basket. Access your email, calendars & files via cloud services like google workspace set up migration – from anywhere and from any device.

But multi-cloud environments are not without challenges. Taking advantage of the benefits without increasing complexity requires a strategy that ensures applications are not tightly coupled to cloud-specific technologies. Supporting a storage abstraction layer that insulates the application from the underlying cloud provider’s interfaces allows an application to be easily used with multiple clouds. It allows storage features specific to a cloud to be exposed in a standardized manner and enables data to be transparently accessed and migrated as needed in order to take advantage of cloud-specific features without the application being aware of the underlying mechanics, thus reducing or eliminating the limits and vulnerabilities of any one cloud.

For a scalable, fine-grained access control for hybrid- and multi-cloud, you may check out this site https://privacera.com/products/centralized-access-control/.

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Storage at the Edge Q&A

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

The ability to run analytics from the data center to the Edge, where the data is generated and lives creates new use cases for nearly every business. The impact of Edge computing on storage strategy was the topic at our recent SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) webcast, “Extending Storage to the Edge – How It Should Affect Your Storage Strategy.” If you missed the live event, it’s available on-demand. Our experts, Erin Farr, Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Storage CTO Innovation Team and Vincent Hsu, IBM Fellow, VP & CTO for Storage received several interesting questions during the live event. As promised, here are answers to them all.

Q. What is the core principle of Edge computing technology?

A. Edge computing is an industry trend rather than a standardized architecture, though there are organizations like LF EDGE with the objective of establishing an open, interoperable framework. Edge computing is generally about moving the workloads closer to where the data is generated and creating new innovative workloads due to that proximity. Common principles often include the ability to manage Edge devices at scale, using open technologies to create portable solutions, and of ultimately doing all of this with enterprise levels of security. Reference architectures exist for guidance, though implementations can vary greatly by industry vertical.

Q. We all know connectivity is not guaranteed – how does that affect these different use cases? What are the HA implications?

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Can Cloud Storage and Big Data Live Happily Ever After?

Chip Maurer Leave a comment

“Big Data” has pushed the storage envelope, creating a seemingly perfect relationship with Cloud Storage. But local storage is the third wheel in this relationship, and won’t go down easy. Can this marriage survive when Big Data is being pulled in two directions? Should Big Data pick one, or can the three of them live happily ever after? This will be the topic of discussion on October 21, 2021 at our live SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies webcast, “Cloud Storage and Big Data, A Marriage Made in the Clouds.” Join us as our SNIA experts will cover:

  • A short history of Big Data
  • The impact of edge computing
  • The erosion of the data center
  • Managing data-on-the-fly
  • Grid management
  • Next-gen Hadoop and related technologies
  • Supporting AI workloads
  • Data gravity and distributed data  

Register today! Our speakers will be ready to take your questions and black-tie is not required for this wedding!

Moving Genomics to the Cloud

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

The study of genomics in modern biology has revolutionized the discovery of medicines and the COVID pandemic response has quickened genetic research and driven the rapid development of vaccines. Genomics, however, requires a significant amount of compute power and data storage to make new discoveries possible. Making sure compute and storage are not a roadblock for genomics innovations will be the topic of discussion at the SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative live webcast “Moving Genomics to the Cloud: Compute and Storage Considerations.”

This session will feature expert viewpoints from both bioinformatics and technology perspectives with a focus on some of the compute and data storage challenges for genomics workflows. 

We will discuss:

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Extending Storage to the Edge

Jim Fister Leave a comment

Data gravity has pulled computing to the Edge and enabled significant advances in hybrid cloud deployments. The ability to run analytics from the datacenter to the Edge, where the data is generated and lives, also creates new use cases for nearly every industry and company. However, this movement of compute to the Edge is not the only pattern to have emerged. How might other use cases impact your storage strategy?

That’s the topic of our next SNIA Cloud Storage Technologies Initiative (CSTI) live webcast on August 25, 2021 “Extending Storage to the Edge – How It Should Affect Your Storage Strategy” where our experts, Erin Farr, Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM Storage CTO Innovation Team and Vincent Hsu, IBM Fellow, VP & CTO for Storage will join us for an interactive session that will cover:

  • Emerging patterns of data movement and the use cases that drive them
  • Cloud Bursting
  • Federated Learning across the Edge and Hybrid Cloud
  • Considerations for distributed cloud storage architectures to match these emerging patterns
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Why Cloud Standards Matter

Alex McDonald Leave a comment

Effective cloud data management and interoperability is critical for organizations looking to gain control and security over their cloud usage in hybrid and multicloud environments. The Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI™), also known as the ISO/IEC 17826 International Standard, is intended for application developers who are implementing or using cloud storage systems, and who are developing applications to manage and consume cloud storage. It specifies how to access cloud storage namespaces and how to interoperably manage the data stored in these namespaces. Standardizing the metadata that expresses the requirements for the data, leads to multiple clouds from different vendors treating your data the same.

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