ScaleIO as a SDS

Posted by Shujin Wu on February 28, 2016

ScaleIO Overview:

EMC ScaleIO is a software-defined solution that uses your existing hardware or EMC servers to turn existing DAS storage into shared block storage. Here are few facts:

  • A Software defined storage (SDS) product from EMC
  • It creates a server-based storage area network(SAN) from local application server storage
  • It converts direct-attached storage into shared block storage
  • It uses exsiting host-based internal storage to create a scalable, high-performance, low-cost server SAN
  • ScaleIO can scale from three compute/storage nodes to over 1,000 nodes
  • It can drive up to 240 million IOPS of performance.
  • ScaleIO can be deployeds
    • as storage only
    • as a converged infrastructure combining storage, computational and network resources into a single block

Concepts for Software Defined storage (SDS)

Tranditional storage management is too complex and inefficient:

Traditional Storage Pain Points:

  • Application mapped to specific applicance
  • Storage resources optimized to run specific workload
  • Isolated storage resources

Challenges of Traditional Challenges:

  • Cose more to manage diverse storage solutions
    • Data growth
    • Maintenance, Operations & Support
    • Infrastructure
  • Vendor lock-in (套牢)
    • Limited scalability
    • Not flexiable for innovation
  • Need for massively shared data

What is SDI (Software Defined Infrastructure)

Service Assurance (保证)

  • Automatically deploy and maintains:
    • Policies
    • intelligent monitoring to trigger dynamic provisioning
    • service assurance as application

Provisioning Management

  • Based on requirements of an applicaiton to perform
    • orchestration provisions
    • manages
    • allocate resources optimally

Pooled resource

  • resources are abstracted into resouce pools. E.g.
    • Netwrok
    • Storage
    • Compute elements

SDS - A Key Component of SDI

SDS is a framework that delivers a scalable, cost-effective solution to serve the needs of tomorow’s data center

  • Abstracting software from hardware, providing flexibility& scalability
  • Aggregating(汇总) diverse provider solutions, increasing flexibility and drive down costs
  • Provisioning resources dynamically (Pay-as-you-grow) increasing efficiency
  • Orchestrating application access to diverse atorage systems through Service Level Agreements(SLAs), increasing flexibility and handle data complexity

Note:

Service assurance (SA)

  • a procedure or set of procedures intended to optimize performance
  • provide management guidance in communications networks, media services and end-user applications.
  • Service assurance is an all-encompassing paradigm that revolves around the idea that maximizing customer satisfaction inevitably maximizes the long-term profitability of an enterprise.

References:

[1] Delivering a standards based SDS Framework with an Open Stack SDS Controller Implementation [2] What is Service Assurance [3]EMC Day 3: ScaleIO – Unleashed for the world! [4]EMC ScaleIO Wiki