Storage challenges
Rapid data growth - 40% YoY*
Storage cost
and
infrastructure
sprawl
Complex data
protection &
recovery
Resource
constraints
Storage Today = Complex & Expensive
*
Source: EMC Digital Universe with Research and Analysis by IDC, 2014
StorSimple 8000 series: Where they fit in
StorSimple 8100, StorSimple 8600 with Microsoft Azure StorSimple Manager and Microsoft
Azure StorSimple Virtual Appliance
Customer Data Center
Applications in Physical or Virtual Servers
StorSimple Hybrid Storage Array
StorSimple 8100
15TB - 40TB local
200TB with cloud
StorSimple 8600
40TB – 100TB local
500TB with cloud
Consolidated storage
and data management
Access in Azure to
enterprise data
Azure Data Center
Applications in Virtual Servers
Microsoft Azure
StorSimple Manager
1
8000 series storage arrays are built and distributed by Seagate
Microsoft Azure
StorSimple Virtual
Appliance
Tiering to Azure versus other clouds, with StorSimple
Features
Microsoft Azure
AWS, OpenStack, HP
Cloud Storage
√
√
StorSimple Manager Service
(in Azure)
√
√
Disaster Recovery with
StorSimple Virtual Appliance
(Failover)
√
Applications in Azure with
StorSimple Virtual Appliance
(Clone)
√
Migration Tool Kit
√
4
Microsoft Azure StorSimple Big Picture
ON-PREMISES DATA CENTER
CLOUD DATACENTER
Cloud
Series 8000
Hybrid Storage Array
Server
StorSimple
Virtual
Appliance
StorSimple
Manager
StorSimple
Snapshot
Manager
Plug-in
Administrator
StorSimple 8000 series: Hardware specs summary
Model Number
81001
86001
Usable Capacity
15TB
40TB
Usable SSD Capacity
800GB
2TB
Effective Local Capacity2
15-75TB
40-200TB
Max Capacity (including cloud)
200TB
500TB
Network Interface Cards
Enclosure Form Factor
2 x 10G and 4 x 1G
1 X 2U
2 X 2U
StorSimple 8000 series: StorSimple Virtual Appliance
Model Number
1100
Maximum Capacity
30TB
Storage
Azure BLOB
Network
Connects to VMs via a virtual network
in Azure
* No MPIO
Fault tolerance of enterprise class storage
Dual Controllers
Redundant
Power Supplies
Network
Interfaces
Software
Feature
Protects
Against?
How is works?
Controller
failover
Protection
against the failure
of a controller.
The dual controllers are
active/passive. In the event
the active controller fails
the passive controller
automatically takes over.
NVRAM mirrored across
controllers via NTB.
Storage Spaces
Protection in the
event of one or
more drive
failures.
Disk insert into and
removal from pools.
Nondisruptive
software
upgrades (NDU)
Allows updates to
be made to the
operating system
without taking
downtime.
The software is
downloaded and updated
on each controller. One
controller is up at all times
to continue processing
and serving data.
Networking
Physical,
Virtual Servers
 iSCSI should be on the storage
network and it is not recommended
to route the iSCSI traffic
 To access azure, the firewall should
allow HTTPS port (443)
NIC
VLAN1
NIC
D1
 If external DNS server is used, ports
for DNS should be open
 If external SMTP server is used for
notification, port 25 should be open
NIC
VLAN2
NIC
D2
CONTROLLER 1
NIC
MGMT
WAN
(Corporate)
NIC
D3
NIC
D1
NIC
D2
CONTROLLER 2
NIC
D3
NIC
MGMT
Local, Zone, and Geo Redundant Storage Options
Primary Location
Secondary Location
Automatic tiering
Time
Low
Threshold
High
Threshold
Tier is empty in the beginning
DATA
New data is written at start of free space
DATA
Data exceeds high watermark
DATA
Old data spills to next tier
DATA
Tier returns to low watermark level
Deduplication
HDD
SSD
64KB Chunks
Dedupe Algorithm
0xabc123
0xaab123
0xccc123
0xabc123
0xaaa123
0xbbb123
0xccc123
0xaac123
0xbbc123
0xbcc123
0xabb123
0xaab123
0xccc123
Record of
hash keys
already
generated
Compression
 Performed on data
already deduplicated
 Heuristics based
compression to reduce
CPU overhead when
data is not compressible
 Default algorithm is the
standard DEFLATE (loss
less compression)
HDD
Deduped Data
0xaab123
0xccc123
Compress Data
Encryption
 Performed deduped and
compressed data
 Encryption key is
generated based on the
seed value provided
 Encryption algorithm is
AES-256 with CBC
 Security keys maintained
by the customer, stored
securely on the
appliance
Compress Data
Data chunk
before encryption
Data chunk after
encryption
Secure data throughout the solution
Cloud
Account Access
StorSimple Virtual Appliance
Account authentication
with User ID, Password
IT administrator
Data At-rest
AES-256 bit
encryption
StorSimple
Customer defined encryption
keys stored on device 2 x 512
bit keys
Data In-flight
AES-256 bit encryption
Consolidated management of appliances
StorSimple Manager
Physical Appliance
Physical Appliance
Virtual Appliance
(Service Data Encryption Key is generated, on device console, when first device is registered)
Microsoft Confidential
StorSimple Virtual Appliance
VM
Data
IT agility in Azure with StorSimple Virtual Appliance
The StorSimple Virtual Appliance facilitates data mobility of production
datasets for the purpose of disaster recovery, on-demand development
and test infrastructure, and Cloud applications.
The StorSimple Manager service provides workflows for failover of
datasets for disaster recovery and clone workflows for replicating
production datasets in Azure for Cloud applications and development
and test scenarios
Vol A
iSCSI
Vol B
Vol C
Vol D
Microsoft Azure
iSCSI
Vol D
iSCSI
Internet
StorSimple
Manager
Local and Cloud snapshots
Example Group Of Data Protection Policies
Backup Type
Local
Snapshot
Snapshot
Type
Frequency
Retention
Period
Local &
Cloud
Daily
~1
week
Mediumterm backup
Cloud
Weekly
~4
weeks
Long-term
Backup
Cloud
Monthly
~52
weeks
SSD
Short-term
backup
SAS
Cloud
Snapshot
StorSimple Snapshot Manager
MMC UI snap-in
that lives on
application host
and
communicates
with appliance(s)
Manages backup
policies
Orchestrates
application
consistent
snapshots
Restores
volumes and
mounts them as
NTFS
folders/drives
Disaster recovery
• Thin restores provides fast recovery
of data, downloading a small
subset of data necessary data bring
applications online. Not dependent
on volume size.
• Recover data anyway: a secondary
datacenter or a StorSimple Virtual
Appliance in Azure
• A volume container is failed over to
the destination appliance. Time to
recover is the same for physical
and virtual appliance
DR to secondary datacenter or Virtual Appliance
Microsoft Azure
Thin
Instant
StorSimple Virtual
Appliance
Predictable
Location independent recovery from
cloud snapshot
Cloud Snapshots
Periodic VSS consistent cloud snapshots
of production data
Production Data
Datacenter-1
Production Data
Datacenter-2
File shares and archives
Applications
Before
Primary
Storage
Archival
Storage
Tape
Disk-based
Backup Storage Infrastructure
After
Applications
(Tier 2, & Tier 3
data)
On-premise footprint
Capacity on-demand
Remote Blob Storage repository for SharePoint
BLOB data
SharePoint Farm
Before
Primary
Storage
Archival
Storage
Tape Offsite Facility
Disk-based
Backup Storage Infrastructure
SharePoint
metadata
After
(SQL)
SharePoint Farm
On-premise footprint
Capacity on-demand
Virtual machines and eliminating VM sprawl
Before
Primary
Storage
Tape
Archival
Disk-based
Storage Backup Storage Infrastructure
& Management
VMs for
Tier 2/Tier 3 workloads
After
On-premise footprint
Capacity on-demand
SQL for Tier-2 and Tier-3 applications
Applications
Before
Primary
Storage
Archival
Storage
Tape
Disk-based
Backup Storage Infrastructure
After
Applications
(Tier 2, & Tier 3
data)
On-premise footprint
StorSimple Virtual Appliance
and Cloud backup and DR
StorSimple: Well-proven enterprise storage solution
28
Manufacturing
“With StorSimple, data is
copied to the cloud in half
the time, and files can be
brought back from Azure in
minutes instead of 24
hours.”
-Kai Sookwongse
Group Manager, Mazda North
American Operations
Military and Aerospace
“We are saving $1M
per month with
StorSimple”
-Les Rowland
Chief Architect of Architects,
Textron (Microsoft Ignite, 2015)
British Fashion Designer
“Prior to StorSimple, Paul
Smith simply added more
and more storage to
accommodate growing
data. Now they are using
StorSimple to create policies
that archives data to Azure
storage if it hasn’t been
accessed in 12 months. “
-Richard Proud Director at
Microsoft Partner, Risual, U.K.
http://www.Microsoft.com/mtc
http://www.Microsoft.com/datacenters
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/en-bd/transform-the-datacentreimmersion/default.aspx#fbid=X6845JFjYCE