Software-Defined Storage

Editor's Notes

• #4: In the past, CIOs have viewed their IT organizations as a builder of services for the business.  But with the explosion of new web services to reach customers, incredible growth in mobile devices, new technologies like Flash, the new paradigm of Cloud computing CIOs are dealing with more complexity than ever and this is driving them to rethink their role. Today, CIOs are moving from being builders of apps and operators of data centers to becoming brokers of information services to the business.  They're embracing new technologies and new service models that allow them to make IT faster, cheaper, and smarter, and make their companies more responsive and more competitive
• #5: SDDC is an emerging architecture and set of technologies that build upon existing cloud and virtualization modelsDesign goal is to enable resources to be defined in software, provisioned based on policy, and deployable on any hardwareInnovation to increase IT agility and operational efficiency while speeding delivery of services to application owners So what we've seen emerge from the technology vendors, to advance the delivery of these services to the application owners and IT end users, is this concept of Software Defined Data Center, where every device in the IT infrastructure will be consumed and managed through software-defined constructs such as service levels and quality of service, service policies, and charge back mechanisms. This emerging architectural model is designed to speed delivery of IT services while improving operational and resource efficiency.  Built on cloud and virtualization models, SDDC has three core characteristics:Resources (compute, networks, security, and data storage) are defined in software, allowing more efficient use and reuse of equipment.Resources are provisioned based on policies and service levels, allowing a mix of workloads to use a shared pool of hardware.Resources can be deployed on a variety of hardware, providing more choice for the purchasing process.
• #6: Software-Defined Storage, or SDS, is one of the elements in the SDDC model, along with Software-Defined Compute, Network, and Security.  SDS is about doing for storage what server virtualization did for servers--breaking down the physical barriers that that bind data to specific hardware, enabling greater operational efficiency, greater availability and lower cost.   At NetApp, we're excited by the market energy around SDS, because it's so consistent with the direction we've been taking with our Storage Operating system, Data ONTAP.  For years we've been attacking the challenges of the hardware-centric monolithic storage model—where data is imprisoned:  its expense, complexity, and inflexibility.  Our latest release, version 8.2, of Clustered Data ONTAP has capabilities that perfectly match the 3 core tenants of Software-Defined Storage:It is integrated with applications to allow application admins direct access and control;It’s a fully virtualized storage environment that allows provisioning based on SLAs, including performance, availability, and efficiency; andIt's deployable across a range of hardwareLet me tell you a bit more about how ONTAP delivers Software-Defined Storage, and why this gets CIOs so excited.
• #7: It all begins with Virtualized Storage Services, defined in software….
• #8: It all begins with Virtualized Storage Services, defined in software--Clustered ONTAP is a highly virtualized storage operating system that abstracts all of the physical storage into a set of Storage Virtual Machines.  This allows us to deliver natively multi-tenant, policy-based storage services, for SAN and NAS, with unmatched storage efficiency.  Quality of Service and data protection can be configured and managed at the level of the Storage VM.  This helps IT be more responsive, provision based on service level, and use policy-based management to operate more consistently. I’m hearing that more and more from customers, “help me operate in a more disciplined and consistent way”.
• #9: If you're a service guy...you want x capacity, x protocol, these are services. If you're not NetApp, you set up a jbod box and get a bunch of luns from there.Services are things that enable the elements of a policy that are relevant to the application--I need this much capacity, this much performance...so the app owner wouldn't say I need SAN/NAS, or efficiency, he'd ask for a service level tied to performance attributes at a particular price point.  Policy attributes are things like performance, capacity, protection, cost. Users care about this.Storage service enablers: efficiency, protocols, multi-tenancy, mobility, what hardware it's provisioned on, etc. So in ONTAP, QoS is a core service. Storage admin cares about this stuff. Highly virtualized storage service delivery engines make the service levels possible.
• #10: In keeping with the SDS model, Data ONTAP can be deployed on range of hardware options…
• #11: In keeping with the SDS model, Data ONTAP can be deployed on range of hardware options: It can be deployed on our own optimized FAS systems, where customers benefit from highly tuned hardware and Flash integrations that let you manage hot data spikes, accelerate metadata, and do host-side data caching.It can be deployed on controllers over other storage vendor systems through our V-Series storage virtualization, And (coming soon) it can be deployed on Commodity x86 systems with ONTAP Edge.  We also offer it on an integrated FlexPod system, and in the cloud through NetApp private storage for Amazon Web Services.This gives customers the purchasing flexibility to choose the platforms that meet their needs, and have common software-defined storage capabilities across a wide range of platform choices.
• #12: Lastly, is the powerful way we can automate service to the applications…. 
• #13: Lastly, is the powerful way we can automate service to the applications.  Application VMs reside on their Storage VMs, and are managed by the application owner.  Application-driven storage services, available through our On-Command Plug-ins and APIs, allow application owners to automatically provision, protect, and manage data through the application management tools directly.  And, we offer deep integrations into cloud stacks from VMware, Microsoft, RedHat, Cisco, and OpenStack.With SDS based on Data ONTAP, application owners can dynamically respond to shifts in demand, and instantly deploy new services.While others may talk about Software-Defined Storage as a "vision of things to come", Clustered ONTAP lets you realize that vision today.  We believe it will make a huge difference to IT, and that it will bring new levels of  Agility to help CIOs reach their Holy Grail of "faster, cheaper, smarter".  This new version of Clustered ONTAP is very exciting.  And to tell you more about it, I'd like to introduce George Kurian, Senior Vice President for Data ONTAP strategy and development at NetApp.