IBM Storage Cloud
This chapter explains the relationship of cloud computing to storage and the larger IT landscape. Clouds can be characterized in terms of ownership, that is, public, private, hybrid, and community clouds. They can also be categorized by the type of services that they provide.
Before focusing specifically on storage clouds, it is useful to describe the larger IT landscape for a general understanding of cloud computing concepts.
This chapter includes the following sections:
3.1 Why IBM Cloud?
In today’s digital economy, the boundaries between virtual and physical experiences are collapsing. Leading businesses understand that customer experience has become the most important source of competitive advantage. With this in mind, IBM has created a collection of fully integrated services to help your business use data across all digital channels to understand its customers and anticipate their needs. It begins with a four-tiered approach.
3.1.1 Why cloud?
Cloud computing, often referred to as simply “the cloud,” is the delivery of on-demand computing resources, everything from applications to data centers, over the Internet on a pay-for-use basis. Cloud computing offers these advantages:
•Elastic resources: You can scale up or down quickly and easily to meet demand
•Metered service: You only pay for what you use
•Self service: All the IT resources you need with self-service access
3.1.2 IBM Cloud software as a service
Cloud-based applications, or software as a service (SaaS), run on distant computers “in the cloud” that are owned and operated by others and that connect to users’ computers through the Internet and, usually, a web browser
SaaS provides the following benefits:
•You can sign up and rapidly start using innovative business apps
•Apps and data are accessible from any connected computer
•No data is lost if your computer breaks because your data is in the cloud
•The service is able to dynamically scale to usage needs
3.1.3 IBM Cloud platform as a service
Platform as a service (PaaS) provides a cloud-based environment with everything required to support the complete lifecycle of building and delivering web-based (cloud) applications. It does so without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware, software, provisioning, and hosting.
PaaS provides the following benefits:
•Develop applications and get to market faster
•Deploy new web applications to the cloud in minutes
•Reduce complexity with middleware as a service
3.1.4 IBM Cloud infrastructure as a service
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provides companies with computing resources that include servers, networking, storage, and data center space on a pay-per-use basis.
IaaS provides the following benefits:
•No need to invest in your own hardware
•Infrastructure scales on demand to support dynamic workloads
•Flexible, innovative services available on demand
3.1.5 Public cloud (SoftLayer)
Public clouds are owned and operated by companies that offer rapid access over a public network to affordable computing resources. With public cloud services, users do not need to purchase hardware, software or supporting infrastructure, which is owned and managed by providers.
Public cloud has the following key aspects:
•Innovative SaaS business apps for applications that range from customer relationship management (CRM) to transaction management and data analytics
•Flexible, scalable IaaS for storage and compute services on a moment’s notice
•Powerful PaaS for cloud-based application development and deployment environments
3.1.6 IBM infrastructure for private cloud
A private cloud is infrastructure that is operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third party, and hosted either internally or externally. Private clouds can take advantage of cloud’s efficiencies while providing more control of resources and steering clear of multi-tenancy.
Private cloud has the following key aspects:
•A self-service interface controls services, allowing IT staff to quickly provision, allocate, and deliver on-demand IT resources
•Highly automated management of resource pools for everything from compute capability to storage, analytics, and middleware
•Sophisticated security and governance designed for a company’s specific requirements
3.1.7 IBM hybrid cloud
A hybrid cloud uses a private cloud foundation combined with the strategic integration and use of public cloud services. The reality is that a private cloud cannot exist in isolation from the rest of a company’s IT resources and the public cloud. Most companies with private clouds will evolve to manage workloads across data centers, private clouds, and public clouds, which creates hybrid clouds.
Hybrid clouds have the following key aspects:
•Allow companies to keep the critical applications and sensitive data in a traditional data center environment or private cloud
•Enable taking advantage of public cloud resources like SaaS, for the latest applications, and IaaS, for elastic virtual resources
•Facilitate portability of data, applications, and services
•Provide more choices for deployment models
3.1.8 Storage cloud
Companies are increasingly turning to service providers to address their cloud infrastructure needs. To meet demand, service providers must ensure that their cloud infrastructure will grow in lockstep with their clients’ needs. They must be able to deploy and scale rapidly while keeping IT service management simple, and without compromising performance or service levels. Similarly, service providers must also minimize costs and prevent disruption to their own businesses even as they expand IT infrastructure and enhance the delivery of services. Along with establishing a robust networking and server foundation, service providers need to deploy data storage that is suited for a cloud environment to ensure their success.
Robust and agile IBM storage solutions help cloud deliver the following benefits:
• Simplicity and economics to drive speed and efficiency,
• Reliability and interoperability to deliver continuous operations
• Predictability and speed to guarantee service levels
For more information about IBM System Storage for Cloud, see the following link:
3.2 Cloud computing overview
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides the following definition1 for cloud computing:
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (for example, networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
Users interact with cloud computing environments with the services that the cloud environment provides. The following examples are of services that are provided by a cloud (cloud services):
•Virtual servers
•Database services
•Email applications
•Storage
A company can use cloud services that are provided by third parties, or it can build its own cloud. The company can then provide services from the cloud to internal company users, to selected business partners or customers, or to the world at large.
For a service to be considered a cloud service, it needs to exhibit the following characteristics:
•Support self-service provisioning
•Be accessible through the Internet or corporate intranet
•Provide resources from a resource pool without the user needing knowledge of the pool
•Provide simple and fast resource elasticity, as users demand changes
•Provide the ability to monitor resources with a dashboard view on cloud health status
•Support a metering capability, which enables a dynamic chargeback model
To provide these characteristics, the infrastructure that enables the cloud services takes advantage of two key enablers:
•Virtualization: Allows computing resources to be pooled and allocated on demand. It also enables pay-per-use billing to be implemented.
•Automation: Allows for the elastic use of available resources, and for workloads to be moved to where resources are available. It also supports provisioning and deprovisioning of service instances to support scalability.
As the user of any service, whether it is being provisioned as a cloud service might be immaterial. However, you are likely to be using a cloud service when the service that you are using exhibits the characteristics that are listed previously.
3.2.1 Cloud service models
When discussing cloud services, a helpful approach is to organize service capabilities into groups. NIST formally describes a standard for grouping cloud services, referring to them as service models. These service models are sometimes referred to as delivery models because they describe the services that are delivered by the cloud model. The following sections describe the NIST service models.
Infrastructure as a service
The IaaS model is the simplest for cloud service providers to provision. It can include the following elements:
•Processing
•Storage
•Network
As an IaaS user, you can deploy and run your chosen software, including operating systems and applications. You do not need to manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, but you have control over the operating systems, storage, and deployed applications.
Examples of commercial implementations of IaaS include IBM SoftLayer, IBM Cloud Managed Services™, IBM Cloud Managed Backup, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and Rackspace.
Platform as a service
The PaaS model includes services that build on IaaS services. They add value to the IaaS services by providing a platform on which the cloud users can provision their own applications, or conduct application development activities. The user does not need to manage the underlying cloud infrastructure (network, storage, operating systems), but can control configuration of the provisioned platform services. The following services are provisioned in PaaS models:
•Middleware
•Application servers
•Database servers
•Portal servers
•Development runtime environments
Examples of commercial implementations of PaaS environments include IBM Bluemix®, IBM Cloudant®, Amazon Relational Database Service, and Microsoft Azure.
Software as a service
The SaaS model provides software services that are complete applications that are ready to use. The cloud user simply connects to the application, which is running at a remote location. The user might not know where the system is located. The cloud service provider is responsible for managing the cloud infrastructure, the system on which the application is running, and the application itself.
SaaS is sometimes referred to as applications as a service. SaaS also includes content services (for example, video on demand) and higher value network services (for example Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)) as typically encountered in communication service provider scenarios.
Examples of commercial implementations of SaaS environments include IBM Watson™ Analytics, IBM API Management on Cloud, IBM Payment Systems, SalesForce, and NetSuite.
Business process as a service
In recognition of the IT industry direction of provisioning business process as a service (BPaaS) from within a cloud environment, IBM developed a definition of the BPaaS model.
The BPaaS model combines software and workflow elements to deliver end-to-end business processes as a service. Many business processes have the potential to be delivered through this model: Both horizontal applications (such as payroll, technical support, and billing) and vertical markets (such as healthcare and insurance).
Examples of commercial implementations of BPaaS include IBM Source to Pay on Cloud, IBM Customer Experience on Cloud, IBM Watson Business Solutions, ADP HR, and Google Adsense.
Cloud service model layering
Figure 3-1illustrates how the service models described previously can be layered. It also contrasts the level of effort required of the service provider with that of the service user through the service model layers. As you travel up the service model layers, the service provider is responsible for providing more effort as the level of functionality increases. By contrast, as you travel down the service layers, the service user must provide more effort in terms of environment customization.
Figure 3-1 Cloud service models
Table 3-1 lists the functions that are provided by the cloud service provider and the cloud service user for each service model.
Table 3-1 Cloud service provider and service user responsibilities by service model
|
Service model
|
Cloud service provider-delivered functions
|
Cloud user-delivered functions
|
|
Business process as a service
|
Business process
↓
|
Business process configuration
|
|
Software as a service
|
Applications
↓
|
Application configuration ↑
|
|
Platform as a service
|
Languages
Libraries
Tools
Middleware
Application servers
Database servers
↓
|
Applications ↑
|
|
Infrastructure as a service
|
Processing
Storage
Network
|
Languages
Libraries
Tools
Middleware
Application servers
Database servers ↑
|
3.2.2 Cloud delivery models
Cloud delivery models refer to how a cloud solution is used by an organization, where the data is located, and who operates the cloud solution.
The following cloud delivery models are available:
•Public cloud
•Private cloud
•Hybrid cloud
•Community cloud
Figure 3-2 illustrates these cloud delivery models, and identifies some of their characteristics in terms of roles, users, and accessibility.
Figure 3-2 Cloud delivery models
Public clouds
A public cloud is one in which the cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group over the Internet. The infrastructure is not owned by the user, but by an organization that provides cloud services. Services can be provided either at no cost, as a subscription, or as a pay-as-you-go model.
Examples of public clouds include IBM SoftLayer, Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, and Microsoft Azure App Service.
Private clouds
A private cloud refers to a cloud solution where the infrastructure is provisioned for the exclusive use of a single organization. By consolidating and centralizing services into a cloud, the organization benefits from centralized service management and economies of scale.
A private cloud provides an organization with some advantages over a public cloud. Private clouds are ideal when the type of work being done is not practical for a public cloud because of network latency, security, or regulatory concerns.
A private cloud can be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or a combination. The private cloud infrastructure is usually provisioned on the organization’s premises, but it can also be hosted in a data center that is owned by a third party.
Hybrid clouds
A hybrid cloud is a combination of various cloud types (public, private, and community). Each cloud in the hybrid mix remains a unique entity, but is bound to the mix by technology that enables data and application portability.
The hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness of a public cloud without exposing applications and data beyond the corporate intranet. A well-constructed hybrid cloud can service secure processes, such as receiving customer payments (a private cloud service), and secondary processes such as employee payroll processing (a public cloud service).
The challenge for a hybrid cloud is the difficulty in effectively creating and governing such a solution. Services from various sources must be obtained and provisioned as though they originated from a single location, and interactions between private and public components make the implementation even more complicated.
Community clouds
A community cloud shares the cloud infrastructure across several organizations in support of a specific community that has common concerns, such as mission, security requirements, policy, or compliance considerations. The primary goal of a community cloud is to have participating organizations realize the benefits of a public cloud, such as shared infrastructure costs and a pay-as-you-go billing structure, with the added level of privacy, security, and policy compliance that is associated with a private cloud.
The community cloud infrastructure can be provided on-premises or at a third party’s data center, and can be managed by the participating organizations or a third party.
For more up-to-date information, see the following website:
3.3 Storage cloud
Cloud data storage is a critical component in the cloud computing model. Without cloud storage, there can be no cloud service. This section explores how these challenges can be addressed in the various storage cloud models that are aligned to cloud computing constructs.
A storage cloud provides SaaS to storage consumers. It might be delivered in any of the previously described cloud delivery models (public, private, hybrid, community). A storage cloud can be used to support a diverse range of storage needs, including mass data stores, file shares, backup, and archive. Implementations range from public user data stores to large private storage area networks (SAN) or network-attached storage (NAS), hosted in-house or at third-party managed facilities. The following examples are publicly available storage clouds:
•IBM SmartCloud® offers various storage options, including archive, backup, and object storage.
•Skydrive from Microsoft allows the public to store and share nominated files on the Microsoft public storage cloud service.
•Email services, such as Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo, store user email and attachments in their respective storage clouds.
•Facebook and YouTube allow users to store and share photos and videos.
•Dropbox allows users to store and access files anywhere, in the web, on a mobile device, on a hard disk drive (HDD), or on the go.
Storage cloud capability can also be offered in the form of storage as a service, where you pay based on the amount of storage space used.
Figure 3-3 shows how various electronic or portable devices can access storage through the Internet without necessarily knowing the explicit details of the type or location of storage that is used underneath.
Figure 3-3 Overview of a storage cloud
3.3.1 Storage usage differences within a cloud computing infrastructure
Within a cloud computing infrastructure, a useful distinction can be made between how storage capacity is used, which is similar to the difference that exists in traditional IT between system data (files, libraries, utilities, and so on), and application data and user files. This distinction becomes important for storage allocation in virtual server implementations.
Storage cloud
Storage cloud is the storage capacity service that is provided for client data. A storage cloud exhibits the characteristics that are essential to any cloud service (self-service provisioning, Internet and intranet accessibility, pooled resources, elastic, and metered). It is a cloud environment on which the offered services allow you to store and retrieve data on behalf of computing processes that are not part of the storage cloud service. Storage in a storage cloud can be categorized in the following ways:
•Hosted storage
This category is primary storage for block, file, or object data that can be written and read on demand. This storage is provisioned as higher performance and availability storage.
•Reference storage
This category is fixed content storage to which blocks or files are typically written to once, and read from many times. The types of data that are on reference storage typically include multimedia, archival data, medical imaging, surveillance data, and log files.
Storage for cloud
Storage for cloud is a general name that is applied to the type of storage environment. It is implemented in cloud computing that is required to provision cloud computing services. For example, when a virtual server machine is created, storage capacity is required. This storage is provisioned as part of the virtual machine (VM) creation process to support the operating system and runtime environment for the instance. It is not delivered by a storage cloud. The types of storage that are provisioned for a cloud service can be categorized in the following ways:
•Ephemeral storage
This storage is required only while a VM is running. It is freed from use and made available to the storage pool when the VM is shut down. Examples of this category of storage include boot volumes, page files, and other temporary data.
•Persistent storage
This storage is required across VM reboots. It is retained even when a VM is shut down. It includes “gold” (master template) images, systems customization, and user data.
Figure 3-4 illustrates the categories of storage found in cloud computing.
Figure 3-4 Storage categories used in cloud
3.3.2 Traditional storage versus storage cloud
This section compares the various challenges of traditional and cloud storage, outlines the advantages of cloud storage, and explains key implementation considerations for potential storage cloud infrastructure deployments.
Challenges of traditional storage
Before exploring the advantages and benefits of storage cloud, this section lists several limitations of current IT infrastructure that businesses deal with daily. This categorization is from a high level. Challenges in one category can sometimes be applicable to other categories.
Constrained business agility
The time that is required to provision storage capacity for new projects or unexpectedly rapid growth affects an organization’s ability to quickly react to changing business conditions. The following constraints are examples:
•Time that is required to deploy new or upgraded business function
•Downtime that is required for data migration and technology refresh
•Unplanned storage capacity acquisitions
•Staffing limitations
Often substantial reserve capacity is required to support growth that requires planning and investment far in advance of the actual need to store data. The following additional issues can affect business agility:
•Inability to meet demand for data availability
•Inability to access the correct data at the correct time to make better business decisions
•Inability to support unplanned acquisitions and staffing limitations
Suboptimal utilization of IT resources
The variation in workloads and the difficulty in determining future requirements typically results in IT storage capacity inefficiencies:
•Difficulty in predicting future capacity and service-level needs
•Peaks and valleys in resource requirements
•Over and under provisioning of IT resources
Extensive capacity planning effort is needed to plan for varying future storage capacity and service level requirements. Capacity is often underutilized because the storage infrastructure requires reserve capacity for unpredictable future growth requirements and therefore cannot be easily scaled up or down.
Organizational constraints
Another barrier to efficient use of resources can be traced to artificial resource acquisition, ownership, and operational practices:
•Project-oriented infrastructure funding
•Constrained operational budgets
•Difficulty implementing resource sharing
•No chargeback or showback mechanism as incentive for IT resource conservation
The limited ability to share data across the enterprise, especially in the context of interdepartmental sharing, can degrade overall use of IT resources including storage capacity. Parallel performance requirements in existing storage systems result in one node supporting one disk, leading to multiplication of nodes and servers.
IT resource management
Efficient IT support is based on cost-effective infrastructure and service-level management to address business needs:
•Rapid capacity growth
•Cost control
•Service-level monitoring and support (performance, availability, capacity, security, retention, and so on)
•Architectural open standardization
The continued growth of resource management complexity in the storage infrastructure is often based on a lack of standardization and high levels of configuration customization. For example, adjusting storage performance through multiple RAID settings and manual tuning the distribution of I/O loads across various storage arrays consumes valuable staff resources.
Duplicate data that exists in the form of copies across organizational islands within the enterprise leads to higher costs for data storage and backup infrastructure. Compounding this problem are ever-shrinking operational and project budgets, and lack of dynamic chargeback or showback models as incentives for IT resource conservation.
Advantages of a storage cloud
Storage cloud has redefined the way storage consumers can do business, especially those who have seasonal or unpredictable capacity requirements, and those requiring rapid deployment or contraction of storage capacity. Storage cloud can help them focus more on their core business and worry less about supporting a storage infrastructure for their data. Storage cloud provides the advantages:
•Facilitates rapid capacity provisioning, which supports business agility
•Improves storage utilization by avoiding unused capacity
•Supports storage consolidation and storage virtualization functionality
•Chargeback and showback accounting for usage as incentive to conserve resources
Improvement in quality of service (QoS), by automating provisioning and management of underlying complex storage infrastructure, helps improve the overall efficiency of IT storage. Cloud features such as deduplication, compression, automatic tiering, and data migration capabilities are generally built-in options and also support the optimizing of storage costs by implementing tiered storage.
Often the growth in file-based systems is restricted to approximately a few terabytes (TB). This restriction can be easily overcome with storage cloud. Ubiquitous access to data over the Internet, intranet, or both, provides location-independent access. It can also provide a single management platform to manage hundreds of nodes, with data flowing from all the nodes to all the storage arrays.
Capital expenditure can be reduced with a cloud operational-based, pay-as-you-go model. Storage clouds can be tailored or services acquired to support key storage operations such as backup and recovery, remote site disaster recovery, archive, or development and test operations.
Figure 3-5 shows layers that provide unique benefits in the storage cloud.
Figure 3-5 Storage cloud characteristics
Implementation considerations for storage cloud
Storage cloud offers many advantages. However, you need to be aware of some of the challenges:
•Have a reliable and robust network infrastructure for remote data access. Because the storage is accessed over the Internet or intranet, a good network connection is essential.
•Security is an important factor. Consider storage device-level encryption for sensitive data.
•Maintain security and control of data that is stored off-site, especially in third-party locations.
•Ensure that regulatory compliance is preserved for various standards.
•Beware of vendor lock-in because of proprietary protocols for access of data by separate storage cloud providers.
•Know the overall reliability of the cloud storage provider. Are service level agreements (SLAs) required, and will providers offer adequate assurance of service delivery? Will the provider remain viable in the future?
•Multitenancy (isolation) is critical. Data needs to be protected from other clients, security threats, viruses, and so on, because data is stored on a common shared storage infrastructure.
•Difficulty in applying policies across many independent filers in an enterprise can cause operational problems.
•Determine whether the cloud storage provider can scale to your capacity and maintain required performance service levels.
•Be able to manage complexity of separate hardware from multiple vendors. Standardization can simplify management for heterogeneous storage devices. Storage virtualization across SAN arrays, such as SAN virtualization with SAN Volume Controller, or Global Namespace solutions, such as IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage, can provide solutions to this issue.
Benefits and features of storage cloud
The overall benefits of storage cloud vary significantly based on the underlying storage infrastructure. Figure 3-6 identifies basic differences between the traditional IT model and a storage cloud model.
Figure 3-6 Benefits of moving to storage cloud from traditional IT infrastructure
Storage clod provides these benefits and features:
•Dynamic scaling and provisioning (elasticity)
One of the key advantages of storage cloud is dynamic scaling, also known as elasticity. Elasticity means that storage resources can be dynamically allocated (scaled up) or released (scaled down) based on business needs. A storage cloud can start small and grow incrementally with business requirements, or even shrink in size to lower costs if appropriate to capacity demands.
•Faster deployment of storage resources
New enterprise storage resources can be provisioned and deployed in minutes compared to less optimized traditional IT, which typically takes more time, sometimes days or even months.
•Reduction in total cost of ownership and better return on investment
Enterprise storage virtualization and consolidation lower infrastructure total cost of ownership (TCO) significantly, with centralized storage capacity and management driving improved usage and efficiency, generally providing a higher return on investment (ROI) through storage capacity cost avoidance.
•Reduce cost of managing storage
Virtualization helps in consolidating storage capacity and helps achieve much higher utilization, significantly reducing the capital expenditure on storage and its management.
•Greener data centers
By consolidating geographically dispersed storage into fewer data centers, you achieve a smaller footprint in terms of rackspace. You can save on energy (electrical power) and charges for infrastructure space.
•Dynamic, flexible chargeback model (pay-per-use)
By implementing storage cloud, an organization pays only for the amount of storage that is used rather than paying for an incremental spare capacity, which remains idle until needed. Savings can also be realized from hardware and software licensing for functionality such as replication and point-in-time copy.
•Multiuser file sharing
By centralizing the storage infrastructure, all users can have parallel and simultaneous access to all the data across the enterprise.
•Self-service user portal
A self-service user portal that is based on a service catalog empowers clients to automatically provision based on predefined templates. You can manage IT infrastructure that is based on the users needs.
•Integrated storage and service management
The storage cloud infrastructure usually includes integrated management software, which helps to manage the complete storage infrastructure from a single console.
•Improved efficiency of data management
Consolidation and standardization of storage resources facilitates less infrastructure complexity. Consistent policies and process with integrated management tools support geographically diverse infrastructure requirements.
•Faster time to market
Automation, self-service portals, rapid deployment, dynamic scaling, and centralized storage management enhance business agility. Businesses can focus on building their core products and competencies instead of worrying about the management of their IT infrastructure.
For more detailed information about Cloud Storage Solutions, see IBM Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud Storage Solutions, REDP-4873.
3.4 IBM storage hardware cloud offerings
IBM is a proven leader in working with clients worldwide to collaborate in solving business problems through the implementation of world class, smart information technology solutions. From hyper-efficient storage arrays and massively scalable virtualization engines to smarter infrastructure management software to comprehensive implementation and operational services capabilities, the IBM portfolio of smart storage cloud capabilities is unmatched in the industry.
If you are building your own storage cloud solution or want a complete solution immediately, the IBM storage cloud portfolio can fulfill that need. Consider the following offerings:
•IBM XIV Storage System. The IBM XIV Storage System is a high-end fully scalable general-purpose disk storage system with a design that is an ideal match with cloud delivery models. It offers an outstanding virtualized grid design, which allows massive parallelism that always allocates system resources evenly. It scales performance with capacity, transparently providing elasticity, which is essential for cloud implementations.
For more information about the IBM XIV Storage System, see Chapter 7, “IBM XIV Storage System” on page 157.
•IBM Storwize V7000 and V7000 Unified Storage System. IBM Storwize V7000 Unified is a virtualized storage system that is designed to consolidate block and file workloads into a single storage system for simplicity of management, reduced cost, highly scalable capacity, performance, and high availability.
IBM Storwize V7000 Unified storage also offers improved efficiency and flexibility through built-in solid-state drive (SSD) optimization, thin provisioning, and nondisruptive migration of data from existing storage. The system can virtualize and reuse existing disk systems to provide greater potential ROI. With Integrated IBM Active Cloud Engine®, you can use all those features to build your storage cloud.
For more information about IBM Storwize V7000 Unified, see Chapter 4, “IBM SAN Volume Controller and IBM Storwize family” on page 81.
•IBM SAN Volume Controller. SAN Volume Controller is a storage virtualization system that enables a single point of control for storage resources to help support improved business application availability and greater resource utilization. The objective is to manage storage resources in your IT infrastructure. You can ensure that they are used to the advantage of your business, and used quickly, efficiently, and in real time, while preventing increases in administrative costs.
For more information about IBM SAN Volume Controller, see Chapter 4, “IBM SAN Volume Controller and IBM Storwize family” on page 81.
•IBM FlashSystem storage. IBM Flash System delivers extreme performance to derive measurable economic value across the data architecture: Servers, software, applications, and storage.
For information about IBM FlashSystem storage, see Chapter 5, “IBM FlashSystem family” on page 127.
•IBM Storage DS8880. The IBM DS8880 is the IBM flagship enterprise class Tier 1 block storage device.
For more information about IBM DS8880, see Chapter 6, “IBM DS8800 Storage System” on page 141.
3.5 IBM storage cloud software offering
IBM storage cloud is a family of integrated enterprise-class cloud computing technologies and services for securely building and using private and public clouds. Built upon open standards and combined with deep IBM expertise and preferred practices, storage cloud is designed for complex high-performance computing environments. Storage cloud goes beyond securely delivering new cloud efficiencies and cost savings to drive fundamental innovation for lasting marketplace advantage.
3.5.1 IBM software defined storage
This section gives an overview of IBM software-defined storage (SDS) products offering with a focus on the IBM Spectrum Storage family of products and their capabilities and benefits.
The products are organized by their functions within the SDS control plane or SDS data plane. The control plane is the software layer that manages administrative functions (for example, configuration, monitoring, replication, policy automation, and provisioning) for SDS resources.
New IBM Spectrum Storage family contains these products:
•Spectrum Control
Automated control and optimization of storage and data infrastructure (formerly IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center, Management layer of IBM Virtual Storage Center, and IBM Spectrum Control Base Edition - IBM Storage Integration Server)
•Spectrum Protect
Optimized data protection for client data through backup and restore capabilities. (formerly IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery IBM Tivoli FlashCopy Manager)
•Spectrum Virtualize
Core SVC functionality is virtualization that frees client data from IT boundaries (formerly IBM SAN Volume Controller)
•Spectrum Accelerate
Enterprise storage for cloud deployed in minutes instead of months (formerly IBM XIV as Software)
•Spectrum Scale
Storage scalability to yottabytes and across geographical boundaries (formerly IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS))
•Spectrum Archive
Enables long-term storage of low activity data (formerly IBM Linear Tape File System Enterprise Edition, Library Edition, and Single Drive Edition)
For more information about IBM SDS, see Chapter 2, “IBM Spectrum Storage family” on page 13.
3.5.2 OpenStack cloud software in cloud computing
Pre-built, pre-tested cloud workflow IaaS offerings are popular for organizations that need to change quickly to stay competitive. By adopting a proven IaaS solution, an IT organization can obtain and implement a reliable template and toolset for implementing true cloud capabilities within the IT organization.
The OpenStack architecture goal is to provide an open source cloud operating system IaaS platform for creating and managing large groups of virtual private servers in a cloud computing environment. OpenStack cloud software is an open source IaaS cloud operating system, which was released under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license.
By adopting and using offerings such as OpenStack cloud software, the IT organization is able to organize, develop skill sets, and deploy cloud computing around proven offerings that already implement industry cloud computing best practices.
OpenStack architecture is one implementation of a best practices cloud workflow. Regardless of the cloud operating system environment that is used, the following key summary points apply:
•Cloud operating systems provide the necessary technology workflow to provide truly elastic, pay-per-use cloud services.
•OpenStack cloud software provides a vibrant open source cloud operating system that is growing quickly.
•OpenStack has the following storage components:
– The Cinder component provides support, provisioning, and control of block storage.
– The Swift component provides support, provisioning, and control of object storage.
– The Manila component provides support, provisioning, and control of file storage.
Figure 3-7 shows the OpenStack architecture.
Figure 3-7 OpenStack high architecture high-level overview
OpenStack storage components
Within the overall cloud workflow, the following OpenStack components support storage:
•Cinder (block storage)
•Swift (object storage)
•Manila (file storage)
IBM, a platinum member of the OpenStack Foundation, is an active contributor to OpenStack cloud software and to the Cinder component (and other components of the OpenStack architecture).
OpenStack Cinder
Cinder is the portion of OpenStack cloud software that is responsible for the following functions, among others:
•Creating, modifying, extending, and deleting block storage LUNs
•Attaching/detaching these LUNs to server images created in the Nova component
•Performing block storage functions such as snapshots (create, delete, list)
•Provides support for backup and restore of volumes (volume from snapshot/image)
•Protection functions such as Volume Replications and Consistency Groups
OpenStack software contributors write storage drivers that allow specific storage systems to be supported, provisioned, and managed by Cinder.
IBM has written and contributed OpenStack drivers for the following IBM block storage systems to be supported by Cinder in an OpenStack environment:
•IBM Spectrum Scale (Havana release)
•IBM XIV Storage System (Folsom release)
•IBM Storwize family (Icehouse release)
•IBM System Storage DS8880 (Havana release)
•IBM FlashSystem (Kilo release)
To install the Spectrum Control Cinder driver, make sure that you have access to Virtual Storage Center license with IBM Spectrum Control version 5.2.2, OpenStack (Havana release). The OpenStack Cinder node must run either Red Hat Enterprise 6.4 or higher, or Ubuntu 12.04.
For more information about the IBM storage drivers and functions that are supported in the various OpenStack releases, see:
OpenStack Swift
The OpenStack Swift (Object Store) component provides object storage and allows users to store or retrieve files in a blob mode. Object store is a great fit for data that does not change much such as backups, archives, video, audio, VM images, and Internet-scale repositories of data.
The following are some of the object storage capabilities:
•OpenStack cloud software provides redundant, scalable object storage by using clusters of standardized servers that are capable of storing petabytes of data.
•Object Storage is not a traditional file system, but rather a distributed storage system for static data such as virtual machine images, photo storage, email storage, backups, and archives. Having no central point of control provides greater scalability, redundancy, and durability.
•Objects and files are written to multiple disk drives spread throughout servers in the data center, with the OpenStack software responsible for ensuring data replication and integrity across the cluster.
•Storage clusters scale horizontally simply by adding new servers. If a server or hard disk drive fails, OpenStack software replicates its content from other active nodes to new locations in the cluster. Because OpenStack technology uses software logic to ensure data replication and distribution across different devices, inexpensive commodity hard disk drives and servers can be used in lieu of more expensive equipment.
One thing to note about OpenStack Swift (Object Store) is the eventual consistency. To achieve massive scaling and grow horizontally, the object storage does not have strong consistency, which is typically needed for databases with transactions, where all reads need to be guaranteed to return the most recent data.
IBM Spectrum Scale (as of OpenStack Juno release) combines the benefits of Spectrum Scale with the most widely used open source object store today, OpenStack Swift. Spectrum Scale provides enterprise information lifecycle management (ILM) features. To ensure compatibility with the Swift packages over time, no code changes are required to either Spectrum Scale or Swift to build the solution.
For more information, see A Deployment Guide for IBM Spectrum Scale Object, REDP-5113.
OpenStack Manila
The OpenStack Manila (File) component provides file storage that allows coordinated access to shared or distributed file systems. Although the primary consumption of shares would be OpenStack compute instances, the service is also intended to be accessed independently, based on the modular design established by OpenStack services.
The following capabilities are available in Manila:
•Shared file system services for VMs
•Vendor-neutral API for NFS/CIFS and other network file systems
•IBM Spectrum Scale Manila (in Kilo):
– Extends Spectrum Scale data plane into VM
– Supports both kNFS and Ganesha 2.0
– Create/list/delete Shared and Snapshots
– Allow/deny access to a share based on IP address
– Multi-tenancy
OpenStack architecture Summary
The rapid growth, adoption, and open source nature of OpenStack cloud software, along with its well-designed support of block, object, and file storage, make it an attractive option for implementing a ready, proven cloud best practices workflow.
For more information about OpenStack technology, see the following site:
3.5.3 IBM Cloud Orchestrator
IBM Cloud Orchestrator provides an open and extensible cloud management platform for managing heterogeneous hybrid environments. With IBM Cloud Orchestrator, you can manage your cloud infrastructure.
IBM Cloud Orchestrator helps you with end-to-end service deployment across infrastructure and platform layers. It also provides integrated IT workflow capabilities for process automation and IT governance, resource monitoring, and cost management. The product offers an extensible approach to integration with existing environments, such as network management tools. It facilitates integration with customer-specific service management processes, such as processes that are defined in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
IBM Cloud Orchestrator provides the following features and benefits:
•Quickly deploy and scale on-premises and off-premises cloud services
•Standardization and automation of cloud services through a self-service portal
•Reusable workload patterns to enable dynamic cloud service delivery
•Reduce the administrator workload and error-prone manual IT tasks.
•Use open technologies such as OpenStack cloud software to build an interoperable infrastructure foundation to provision workloads, provide multi-tenancy, and enable administration.
•Deliver services with IBM SoftLayer, existing OpenStack platforms, IBM PowerVM®, IBM z systems, VMware, or Amazon EC2.
Figure 3-8 shows the dashboard of the IBM Cloud Orchestrator that has a “one pane of glass” design that shows all the required information that a cloud administrator needs to effectively manage the cloud resources.
Figure 3-8 IBM Cloud Orchestrator dashboard
Standardization and automation of cloud services help provide the following benefits:
•Allow cloud administrators to expose cloud services in a simpler self-service portal for user consumption
•Control image sprawl, manage image drift, and reduce security vulnerability through analytics, image versioning, and federated image library features
•Include monitoring and capacity analytics capabilities to help consolidate and balance workloads
•Allow you to measure the cost of cloud services with metering and charge-back capabilities
Dynamic cloud service delivery benefits from the following functions of reusable workload patterns:
•Enable rapid deployment and integration of cloud capabilities by using reusable workload patterns for simple infrastructure services and complex multitier applications.
•Allow workload patterns to be created by using templates, or from scratch. After a pattern is created, it can be reused to create multiple identical instances in the cloud.
•Can integrate with middleware components and infrastructure resources to help optimize components for a particular type of application workload.
When different cloud services are used, every service provider has its own management and provisioning tools. Hybrid clouds can refer to a combination of public cloud service and private cloud on-premises. However, hybrid clouds can also consist of two public clouds provided by different vendors or even a combination of a traditional IT system with a cloud. A setup where existing traditional IT systems are combined with a public cloud service is the most frequent use case of a hybrid cloud.
Because different cloud services can be provided by different vendors, there is no complete picture available showing the total number of deployed instances. An orchestration layer can be a solution for the problem. This layer uses a single interface for all cloud-related tasks that the orchestration layer will communicate with the different cloud services through application programming interfaces. Standardized APIs are being introduced in the industry under the OpenStack initiative. Because IBM Cloud Orchestrator has its infrastructure built on OpenStack, it can provide a unifying view across hybrid cloud services.
Monitoring and metering
IBM Cloud Orchestrator Enterprise enables monitoring of workloads and instances through IBM Cloud Monitoring (ICM). This application includes monitoring virtual environments. IBM Cloud Monitoring can also do capacity planning for correct workload placement, which includes support for both VMware and PowerVM.
Metering capability on a cloud enterprise can be enabled with IBM SmartCloud Cost Management (SCCM). IBM SmartCloud Cost Management can meter the cloud services based on allocation and utilization.
IBM SmartCloud Cost Management requires a data source so that data collectors can collect data from a database or web service. SmartCloud Cost Management supports these four data source types:
•Database
•Message broker
•Server
•Web service
To administer and manage the SmartCloud Cost Management, you must define rate codes, rate groups, and a calendar, and set some configuration options.
Offerings allow you to easily manage the rate groups and rates by logically categorizing related rate groups and rates within a rate table. Rate groups contain rates that can be optionally categorized into offerings.
Rate groups allow all rate codes to be assigned into a group. Creating and using these rate groups let you create rate subtotals in reports, graphs, and spreadsheets. You can group rates such as Windows Charges, UNIX Charges, and Mainframe Charges and all of them will be summarized in a way that is meaningful.
Through SmartCloud Cost Management, a storage administrator can also define Pricing Models to use different pricing models for the same data metering. Differential Pricing uses a rate table for differential pricing and Rate Group/Rate Reordering to show and reorder the rates that are displayed in SmartCloud Cost Management.
For more information about IBM Cloud Orchestrator, see the following link:
For more information about IBM Cloud Orchestrator metering and billing, see:
3.5.4 Cleversafe solution
On November 6, 2015, IBM completed the acquisition of Cleversafe (now referred to as Cleversafe, an IBM Company). Cleversafe is a web-scale object storage leader with over 350 patents that delivers a breakthrough private cloud software platform that solves petabyte-and-beyond storage challenges. Supporting some of the world’s largest data repositories, the Cleversafe solution can significantly reduce storage costs while providing carrier-grade security, high reliability, and simplified storage management. Cleversafe has several customers who use its object storage solution at over 100PBs
Cleversafe's software platform delivers the scalability, security, and cost efficiency needed to harness the power of web-scale data.
Cleversafe provides IBM Cloud with core technology to drive IBM SoftLayer Object Storage service, creating the scalable and reliable storage platform upon which many services can be built. Services like analytics and mobile solutions will be able to use the SoftLayer storage platform to create dynamic and innovative applications with the Cleversafe technology at its foundation. Cleversafe technology also provides IBM clients and service providers with a leading object storage solution that helps the storage administrator manage large amounts of unstructured data. In addition to being implemented in SoftLayer, Cleversafe’s solutions will also be implemented in the storage division’s Spectrum Storage family of software defined storage.
Increasing revenue and lowering costs requires a holistic data strategy for next generation mobile, social, cloud, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The combination of IBM and Cleversafe addresses a broad set of workloads with an expansive set of object-based solutions for unstructured data, such as images, video, and audio files. Cleversafe provides scalability and security without complexity and in many instances at less cost than traditional methods. IBM clients benefit from consistent, scalable, cost-efficient hybrid deployment options, both on-premise when control and security of data is important and in the IBM cloud, making it easier for clients to scale, respond to, and right-size their data deployments.
For more information about Cleversafe, see the following website:
3.6 Security and data protection
Organizations today demand that their data be protected from corruption and loss, whether by accident or intent. This section highlights the security and data protection mechanisms available within storage clouds, and their relevance to providing the data integrity, which businesses have come to expect.
3.6.1 Backup and disaster recovery
Despite rapid data growth, data protection and retention systems are expected to maintain service levels and data governance policies. Data has become integral to business decision-making and basic operations, from production to sales and customer management. Data protection and retention are core capabilities for their role in risk mitigation and for the amount of data involved.
The storage environment offers three functions that improve efficiency and effectiveness of data protection and retention:
•Backup and recovery: Provides cost-effective and efficient backup and restore capabilities, improving the performance, reliability, and recovery of data in respect to SLAs. Backups protect current data, and are unlikely to be accessed unless data is lost.
•Archiving: Retains data that has long-term data retention requirements, either for compliance or business purposes, by providing secure and cost effective solutions with automated process for retention policies and data migration to different storage media.
•Continuous data availability: Ensures uninterrupted access to data for critical business systems, reducing the risk of downtime and providing capability to fail over transparently and as instantaneously as possible to an active copy of the data. The total mirroring strategy needs to be automated to ensure automated failover and then an appropriate automated fail-back.
IBM Spectrum Protect
IBM Spectrum Protect is a family of products that helps manage and control the “information explosion” by delivering a single point of control and administration for storage management needs. It provides a wide range of data protection, recovery management, movement, retention, reporting, and monitoring capabilities by using policy-based automation.
IBM Spectrum Protect enables data protection from failures and other errors by storing backup, archive, space management, and restore data as well as compliance and disaster-recovery data in a hierarchy of auxiliary storage. IBM Spectrum Protect can help protect computers that run various operating systems, on various hardware platforms and connected together through the Internet, wide area networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), or SANs.
The progressive incremental methodology that is used by IBM Spectrum Protect backs up only new or changed versions of files. This process greatly reduces data redundancy, network bandwidth, and storage pool consumption as compared to traditional methodologies.
For the complete description of IBM Spectrum Protect products family, see Chapter 2, “IBM Spectrum Storage family” on page 13.
Table 3-2 lists the main features, advantages, and benefits that are offered by IBM Spectrum Protect.
Table 3-2 Main features, advantages, and benefits of IBM Spectrum Protect
|
Features
|
Advantages
|
Benefits
|
|
Backup and recovery management
|
Intelligent backups and restores using a progressive incremental backup and restore strategy, where only new and used files are backed up
|
Centralized protection based on smart-move and smart-store technology, leading to faster backups and restores with fewer network and storage resources needed
|
|
Hierarchical storage management
|
Policy-based management of file backup and archiving
|
Ability to automate critical processes that relate to the media on which data is stored while reducing storage media and administrative costs associated with managing data
|
|
Archive management
|
Managed archives
|
Ability to easily protect and manage documents that need to be kept for a certain period
|
|
Advanced data reduction
|
Combines incremental backup, source and target data deduplication, compression, and tape management to provide data reduction
|
Reduces the costs of data storage, environmental requirements, and administration
|
For the most current list of IBM Spectrum Protect products, see the following website:
3.6.2 Multitenancy
Multitenancy is an architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers. Each customer is called a tenant. Tenants might be given the ability to customize some parts of the application, such as color of the user interface (UI) or business rules, but they cannot customize the application's code.
Multitenancy in cloud environments
The term multitenancy refers to an architecture that is typically used in cloud environments. Instead of providing each cloud service consumer (tenant) a separate, dedicated infrastructure (single-tenancy architecture), all consumers share one common environment. Shared layers must behave as though they were set up in a dedicated fashion in terms of customization, isolation, and so on.
In general, multi-tenancy implies multiple non-related consumers or customers of a set of services. Within a single organization, this could be multiple business units with resources and data that must remain separate for legal or compliance reasons. Most hosting companies require multi-tenancy as a core attribute of their business model. This requirement might include a dedicated physical infrastructure for each hosted customer or logical segmentation of a shared infrastructure by using software-defined technologies.
A cloud environment has two primary technology stacks where multitenancy is relevant:
•The management environment (cloud management stack)
•The managed environment (infrastructure, platform, or application that is provided as a service)
Depending on the service model, the level and degree of shared infrastructure varies as illustrated in Figure 3-9. For IaaS, typically hypervisors are installed on the managed hardware infrastructure. For PaaS, there is a multitenancy-enabled middleware platform, and for SaaS, the multitenancy-enabled software application is divided into virtual partitions.
Figure 3-9 Multitenancy in cloud environments
Multitenancy offers several main benefits:
•Can quickly scale to more tenants
•Is cost-effective because the infrastructure is shared by all tenants
•Requires less management effort than a virtualized or mediated approach
•Requires less storage
IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager
Tivoli Service Automation Manager (see 3.5.3, “IBM Cloud Orchestrator” on page 69) allows service providers to create cloud environments that can be used by multiple customers (multitenancy). Its main strength is data segregation. Teams of users are assigned to a customer and, although a single cloud can support multiple customers, each user sees only the objects that are associated with the customer that that user is assigned to. Customers can share a set of servers, storage, and network resources, or be assigned to different physical resources.
Furthermore, the cloud service provider can assign quotas to each cloud service consumer to define limits on the usage of specific resource pools. These limits define the amount of resources that can be requested by an individual cloud service consumer, such as the amount of storage, memory, physical CPU, and disk.
IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Spectrum Virtualize
IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Spectrum Virtualize provide several features that can be used to support scenarios where multiple tenants, can share the large amount of file type storage:
•Security
– Authentication: IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Spectrum Virtualize connect to a single, trusted authentication source that can be either Active Directory or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). This configuration allows different tenants such as different departments to use their own, isolated user directories.
– Authorization: The access control lists (ACLs) that are used to store common permission attributes for NFS and CIFS are the baseline for consistent mappings across all platforms.
– Audit logging: IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Spectrum Virtualize support audit logging for all command-line interface (CLI) and graphical user interface (GUI) commands.
•Separation of data
– Hardware separation: Physical storage is organized in storage pools that allow a separation on the hardware level.
– Logical separation: From a flexibility perspective, logical separations are far superior to physical separation. Dynamic allocation from a common physical hardware pool to logical entities allows quota-based over-provisioning, and also small step-expansion.
•Utilization and chargeback
– Accounting: IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Spectrum Virtualize allow reporting on these levels: User, group, share (if created as file set), and file system.
– SLA restrictions: Dedicating physical components to individual users can be used for mitigation. For example, assigning a limited number of physical ports to certain servers will throttle the bandwidth that becomes available to those servers. Creating dedicated file systems and file sets on dedicated storage pools can restrict the available disk performance.
Antivirus
NAS systems are designed to serve many users by connecting to them using various file-based protocols, such as NFS or CIFS. The integrity of data that is created or accessed by using these protocols is potentially vulnerable to threats such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other forms of malware. An antivirus solution that works directly with your NAS system helps you to effectively protect your data against those threats.
Encryption
The primary security controls for restricting access to sensitive information that is stored on user devices are encryption and authentication. The appropriate encryption solution for a particular situation depends primarily on the type of storage, the amount of information that needs to be protected, the environments where the storage is located, and the threats that need to be mitigated.
Encryption is a technique that is used to encode data with an encryption key so that the information content of the data can be decoded only with knowledge of the decryption key. Data that is encrypted is referred to as ciphertext. Data that is encrypted into ciphertext is considered secure from anyone who does not have possession of the decryption key.
DS8000 disk encryption
Self-encrypting drives protect and secure enterprise information from external and internal threats. The DS8000 (DS8700, DS8800, DS8870) disk system supports data encryption with the IBM Full Disk Encryption (FDE) drives. All disks in the DS8000 must be FDE drives. No intermix is allowed.
IBM FlashSystem encryption
IBM FlashSystem offerings (840, V840, 900, V9000) are used to make applications and data centers faster and more efficiently. Encryption is provided optionally to protect data at rest against the potential exposure of sensitive user data and user metadata that are stored on discarded or stolen flash modules.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize Gen2 encryption
The IBM Storwize family (Gen2 systems) built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize software also provides an optional encryption for data at rest by using the Protection Enablement Process (PEP). PEP transitions the system from a state of not protection-enabled to protection-enabled.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate Gen3 encryption
The IBM XIV Storage System offers a data-at-rest encryption solution that uses self-encrypting disks (SEDs) and flexible key manager software. When encryption is enabled, the optional solid-state drive (SSD) disks used as flash cache are also encrypted by using software-based AES 256-bit encryption. Uniquely among IBM products, the XIV Storage System offers hot encryption. When encryption is enabled on the XIV system, all data that resides on it is encrypted within minutes, with no performance impact..
IBM XIV
Although most of the storage products offer encryption at extra cost, XIV encryption is available at no additional fee. However, an external key server implemented by IBM Security Lifecycle Manager (SKLM) is required. The IBM XIV solution offers also a simple solution for securely erasing (cryptographic erasure) any disk drive that is being retired or repurposed.
IBM Spectrum Protect encryption
IBM Spectrum Protect client data encryption is the ability to encrypt the actual data file payload for a backup, archive, restore, or retrieve session. The encryption and decryption is done on the client, and all data that is transferred between client and IBM Spectrum Protect server is kept in encrypted cypher text for added protection. For the IBM Spectrum Protect client, transparent encryption is also available. When you use this option, the encryption key is sent to the Spectrum Protect server (the encryption key is itself encrypted) and is stored on the Spectrum Protect server.
IBM tape and virtual libraries
Tape continues to be the most cost-effective, flexible, and scalable medium for high-capacity storage for backup and archiving. Tape can help address compliance requirements with encryption and Write Once Read Many (WORM) solutions. IBM high capacity, high performance tape, and virtual tape offerings can reduce back up windows and allow consolidation of more data onto fewer cartridges.
IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager
IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager helps meet regulations and standards such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Sarbanes-Oxley, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It supports the OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) standard.
Version V2.5 delivers these advantages:
•An improved and simplified user interface
•Easier installation by using the IBM Installation Manager
•Quicker, more silent installation that lasts approximately 15 minutes
•Seamless integration of all installation components such as IBM WebSphere® Application Server, IBM DB2, and Security Lifecycle Manager application installations.
•Centralized logs (all logs in one place)
•Significantly improved scalability to support larger numbers of keys
•Also includes these advantages:
– All required installation information is gathered and available before the installation commences
– Free-flowing installation with minimal intervention from the user
IBM Security Services
IBM Security Services helps you protect your cloud data through a wide array of software and hardware data protection and encryption technologies. The following are the benefits of using IBM Security Services:
•Protect sensitive data that is accessed, stored, and transmitted on your endpoint devices
•Enforce device-usage policy and support regulatory compliance
•Reduce the need for in-house security specialists
•Promote security-rich information exchange by monitoring sensitive data
3.7 Take the next step
You can focus on how you are going to take the next step. Do you have sufficient resources to take the next step on your own? Do you have sufficient skills to navigate the options? Will a technology partner make a cost-effective contribution?
Cloud storage, as with any other emerging technology, is experiencing growing pains. Some facets are immature, fragmented, and lack standardization. Vendors are promoting their own particular technology as the emerging standard. Although standards are lacking, IBM believes that a set of web services API-based capabilities, accessed through non-persistent connections on public or private networks, provides the fundamental frame of reference for accessing storage cloud services. This definition allows for both public service offerings and private use, and provides a basis for expansion of solutions and offerings.
As a leader in cloud computing, IBM has the resources and experience to help businesses implement and use cloud services, including storage cloud. IBM offers hardware and software technologies and key services to help you take advantage of cloud computing. IBM can assist you in planning, designing, building, deploying, and even managing and maintaining a storage cloud environment.
Whether on your premises or someone else’s, IBM can make the journey move more quickly, and in many cases deliver value to your business much more rapidly, ultimately saving you money.
Clients that have implemented an IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud solution are projecting savings as follows:
•A large client with 1.5 PB of usable unstructured file system capacity projects savings of over $7.1 million (USD) over the course of five years in hardware acquisition and maintenance, and environmental and administration costs.
•A medium client with 400 TB of usable unstructured file system capacity projects savings of over $2.2 million in hardware acquisition and maintenance, and environmental and administration costs.
•A small client with 200 TB of usable unstructured file system capacity projects savings of over $460,000 in hardware acquisition and maintenance, and environmental and administration costs.
The latest information related to IBM cloud offerings is available at the following website:
IBM personnel can assist you by developing a high-level architecture and implementation plan. This plan includes a supporting business case to justify investment based on a compelling return on investment, with improved service levels and lowered costs for your cloud infrastructure. IBM consultants use the unique Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (CCRA) and the IBM Cloud Workload Analysis Tool to help you analyze your existing environment. They can then determine the cloud computing model that is best suited for your business. They help you identify the business areas and workloads that, when changed to a cloud computing model, can enable you to reduce costs and improve service delivery t in line with your business priorities.
For more information about Cloud Storage Solutions, see IBM Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud Storage Solutions, REDP-4873.
1 See NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-145, A NIST Definition of Cloud Computing: http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-145.pdf
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