Reaching the Billion IOP Datacenter

Traditional data storage is being stretched beyond its boundary and design. Users want more
than just raw storage capacity. They want sub-microsecond latencies, multiple instances of
terabytes, and hundreds of thousands of IOPs per deployment. All this across multiple
coexisting workloads.

Many blogs or white papers are declaring these needs and raising questions about what the
next generation datacenter will look like from data storage companies. People are wondering
what can solve our big data storage problems while offering seamless scalability. Yet amongst
the hype, there is one big problem people fail to recognize.

The need to approach the billion IOP datacenter.

We can easily move from kilobytes to megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and petabytes of
storage. Or from kilobit and megabit to multi-gigabit of bandwidth. But what about architecting
a system that can go from kilo-iops, mega-iops, and giga-iops?

You see, the industry has a cloud problem. Everyone wants to save time and money with fewer
people and fewer resources, even though it requires both to design, write, test, deploy, and
scale applications at fast speeds. All of these must work side by side without impacting the
other while being deployed in various frameworks across many platforms. A datacenter is then
fragmented by diverse applications, frameworks, and platforms resulting in silos which prevent
clear operations and efficient economics.

As we watch the public cloud success of data storage companies such as Amazon Web Services,
Google, and Azure, traditional datacenter models are increasingly challenged. The only solution
is a universal data infrastructure and proper data storage management to consolidate the mess.

Here, were addressing this problem with the following four key elements.

Elastic Data and Control Plane

So, how can you attach storage resources to hundreds or thousands of applications with an
elastic control plane?

We createdfloating iSCSI initiator/target relationships. These allow applications to effortlessly

move across storage endpoints and dissolve topological rigidity. When an application moves
across racks, the storage is dragged along and manifests its endpoints on the rightrack.
Migrating apps can be served from many locations at the same time by spreading out all of the
IOPs.
Next, our operational model allows you to describe applications based on their service needs
such as resiliency, performance, affinity, etc. During application deployment, storage isnt
required to be handcrafted as LUNs on pre-determined arrays with pre-set RAID levels. With
our model, every volume has fluid characteristics from the build up to tear down.

Finally, we dont make deployment teams spend valuable time mapping out the storage
system. Rather, we deliver a consolidated architecture that only requires installation.

API-Based Operations Model

We know developers want easy resources. With Dateras data storage management, you can
deploy big data storage without getting lost in the details.

Simply describe your applications needs (service levels) and roles (development, testing,
production, etc.), and watch as Datera does the hard work for you.

You wont be dealing with provisioning, LUN masking, ACLs, authentication hassles, or finding
which ports have access to which storage.

Standard-Based Protocols

So far youve learned Datera is scalable and easy to use. It provides multi-tenant storage for
containers, bare metal, VMs, etc.

But does it support every OS? When and where will drivers be available for Linux, Windows, or
BSD?

If the OS supports iSCSI, Datera supports it.

Fun fact: Datera contributed the block system to Linux, including iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and a
dozen or more storage protocols. This means you have no more hassle with proprietary drivers
and no more client-side proxies.

The Power of NVDIMM/NVRAM/NVMe

Now, how do we reach the infamous gigaiops? This level of performance is completely useless
without solving the three challenges above.
After we capture all applications by their intent, accommodate hundreds to millions of IOPS in a
single cluster, and have a control plane that configures and re-configures, then we can add the
final ingredient.

Powerful NVDIMM and NVMe storage media take us the rest of the way to our gigaiops.

Datera can auto-tier and pool this storage media to scale it across the datacenter. This delivers
higher performance and low latency via standard protocols to any application on any platform.

Sound impressive? Just wait until 3D XPoint arrives.

Think of Datera as the easy button for your datacenter.

At Datera, we:
Made it to the billion IOP datacenter
Started with hundreds of IOP disks
o Then larger IOP SSDs
o Then even larger NVMe
Figured out the shared nothing, scale-out architecture others claimed to discover. The
mistake was using proprietary drivers while we used standard iSCSI
Learned how to scale and distribute the control plane
No one scaled quite like we did

How did we do this?

Central control plan
No proprietary driver
Auto-tiering
Support for iSCSI and iSER
At 4k Random read, we can give 150,000 IOPs per machine at 600MB/s (youd need
6,000+ machines for this)
Our all flash array offers 500,000 IOPs (youd need 2,000 machines for this)

What is it?
Persistent container storage
Template based application deployment for VMs, bare metal applications
Provisioning storage isnt difficult, standing up a large cluster is. But Datera makes it
simple

Who did it?

We did. Datera created the Application-Driven Cloud Data Infrastructure

Why did we do it?

 Cloud carving for a couple hundred IOP applications to multi-million IOP big data storage
jobs
Hosting providers can get the cost of standard hardware and scale to customer needs
without figuring out placement of storage. One control plane with one API to deploy

If youre interested in saving money outside of AWS or mirroring your current AWS
deployment, we can provide large, elastic, cost-effective, and scalable storage. Others may say
they do too, but ask them their limits.

Many data storage companies may think they have the right parts to the job, but only we know
how to build data storage management systems that are the fastest and most innovative on the
market.

Curious to learn more? Contact us today: http://datera.io/