Previously in this blog series, Storage Switzerland discussed the roles of data protection and data management in the modern data center. Each adds unique value when it comes to cost-efficiently facilitating data availability and privacy, but most software solutions on the market today do not holistically address requirements in both areas. Our most recent blog covered key hallmarks that storage professionals should look for in a platform, and in this installment, we will explore HubStor as a solution to consider from this vantage point.
HubStor is a software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud-native platform that effectively provides data management as a service. As such, the customer does not have to install data management software or a secondary storage infrastructure. Users consume cloud resources as a service, meaning that they no longer need to worry about managing and upgrading software, servers and storage. It also means that these resources become more elastic; users can obtain these resources on demand and pay as they consume them, reducing the need for over-provisioning and avoiding challenging resource planning.
Storage Switzerland notes that one of the key opportunities inherent in a cloud-driven approach such as HubStor’s is the ability to run compute cycles elastically alongside storage, as data flows to the storage resource. The cloud instance becomes more than a data repository. For its part, HubStor allows lightweight data services including data analytics, chargeback, classification, indexing, role-based authentication, search and tiering to be deployed across the centralized cloud-presented data repository. HubStor’s application programming interface (API) and software development kit (SDK) enables data ownership to be abstracted into a centralized presentation layer, whether that data is stored on or off-premises. Users then can simply select and run desired data services from a cloud-delivered portal.
These characteristics are especially important as growing quantities of data need to be governed, managed, protected and stored. Businesses need a less expensive and more agile way to capture this data and to make it accessible for business purposes such as data analytics as well as to comply with data privacy regulations such as the “right to know” and the “right to be forgotten” via the European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) – as well as to meet eDiscovery requests. Some key examples of how HubStor can help include:
- File System Modernization
- Legacy network-attached storage (NAS) systems were not built to facilitate the distributed, real-time collaboration and data access that today’s enterprises require, or to handle the massive influx of small unstructured data files that these enterprises face. HubStor provides policy-driven, continuous backup, version control and tiering to lower-cost object storage, alongside synchronization of global user permissions and metadata as well as fast recall and disaster recovery from virtualized datasets. These capabilities help to reduce the requirement for higher-cost storage tiers (including on-premises solid-state and spinning disk), to facilitate global collaboration, and to ensure compliance.
- Microsoft Office 365
- Collaboration applications, and most notably Microsoft Office, are typically among the first to be migrated to the public cloud. In fact, Microsoft reported that revenue from its SaaS-delivered Office 365 has surpassed that of its conventional Office revenue since the fourth quarter of 2017, and an Osterman Research survey indicates that 60% of mid-sized and large enterprises that are adopting Office 365 plan to migrate the application fully to the cloud. The problem is that Microsoft doesn’t provide backup disaster recovery, or email journaling for Office 365 data. HubStor can facilitate resilient data backups, bulk and granular restores (including OneDrive for Business and Teams), as well as a searchable and scalable data repository.
- Large-Scale Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Workloads
- AI and ML require that very large, high-velocity data sets be processed in real time. Capturing this data can quickly become expensive, and compute nodes can quickly become overloaded by data (especially with the ultra-low levels of latency that are possible with solid-state disks and non-volatile memory express storage access protocols). HubStor can help via capabilities including automated backup, caching, tiering, versioning, and seamless recall, so that data appears local even if it’s not, along with continuous and synchronized data protection.
- Application Retirement
- Finally, but not least importantly, HubStor can be used as a low-cost, long-term archive for data from legacy applications and hardware that have been retired and decommissioned.
Conclusion
Data has tremendous impact on modern businesses. At the same time, it has heavy gravity. Getting the right data to the right user at the right time without breaking the budget is no easy task for storage managers. At the same time, data services such as indexing and search also need to become more centralized and elastic. In this blog series, we have explored how a cloud secondary storage solution, when implemented correctly, can provide the enterprise with holistic data visibility, ready access and a lower cost structure. Specifically, storage managers should evaluate HubStor’s approach of aggregating a virtualized, cloud-delivered data lake and facilitating lightweight, self-service data services to address these pain points.
Senior Analyst, Krista Macomber produces analyst commentary and contributes to a range of client deliverables including white papers, webinars and videos for Storage Switzerland. She has a decade of experience covering all things storage, data center and cloud infrastructure, including: technology and vendor portfolio developments; customer buying behavior trends; and vendor ecosystems, go-to-market positioning, and business models. Her previous experience includes leading the IT infrastructure practice of analyst firm Technology Business Research, and leading market intelligence initiatives for media company TechTarget.
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