Modernize your storage infrastructure with QStar's Object Storage

Not everyone is aware that every day we use indirectly Object Storage technology for our social networking, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Telegram, Pinterest and YouTube, just to name a few. 

The above companies use Object Storage for storing users’ content like photos, streaming videos, files, and much more. Thanks to this technology, they can easily store billions of users’ content. Through Object Storage, large web-scale applications can access data without driving through file-based trees but based only on the content of the information (call object). Accessing objects is also simplified because there are no embedded object hierarchies or filesystems and no devices to manage that look like disks. This feature is one of the many important distinguishing offered by Object Storage technology. Storing data in the form of Objects has become common practice for many IT organizations today.

Object Storage technology is the emerging storage platform for content and long-term data archiving for the needs of today's businesses.

Until recently, the use cases for Object Storage have been predominantly based around cloud storage applications, but they are usually effectively used for financial services, broadcasting, large-scale analytics, surveillance, healthcare and anywhere there is a large amount of data that needs to be stored and managed, a bulk and undifferentiated storage for unstructured data, files, and backups that can even protect against ransomware. Learn how Object Storage is an ideal solution for storing, archiving, backing up, and managing high volumes of static or unstructured data—reliably, efficiently, and affordably.

QStar’s Kaleidos Object Storage

QStar’s Kaleidos Object Storage is a comprehensive object storage solution able to address the relentless growth of data in the most flexible and efficient manner. Designed for a wide range of applications and use cases, QStar Kaleidos Object Storage enables the creation of an unlimited storage pool and tiering that can also embrace different storage technologies, including QStar’s Tape as NAS technology managed across S3 protocol for long-term archiving at exceptionally low cost.

Let us discover how works this efficient, secure, and low-cost storage technology for data storage.

Enterprise data is growing exponentially for any organization, no matter the reference market business and size; managing, storing and accessing that data is a constant and costly challenge. This puts increasing pressure on storage infrastructure that requires ongoing maintenance, expensive upgrades and continuous investment, as all professional IT knows.

Storage costs are significantly increasing due to the dramatic growth of unstructured data coming from multiple fonts and formats like a commercial, scientific, images, multimedia, Internet of Things (IoT), podcasts (digital audio files), vodcast (digital video files), video surveillance, MP3, and business activities that generate a large number of PDF, XLS, PPT, XML, JPEG and many other sources and formats.

All research carried out in this field led to the result that 70 to 80% of all business data generated today is unstructured, and as we know, this condition creates several problems for traditional storage systems, but there is much more:

The utmost of information quickly loses its worth over time

Assessments show that one year after its creation, more than 80% of data stored will no longer read”.

These data occupy expensive space and are backed up and migrated to new storage over the years. Illogically, IT organisations often ignore this vast percentage and irrational practice. Rather than work on this clear and incontestable problem, companies persist instead in buying traditional storage RAID and NAS, continuing to sustain high cost and complexity, moving the problem later.

The time has come for Object Storage

Traditional file systems models and storage systems were built in another technological era, where the amount of data to manage, store, ad access cannot be undoubtedly comparable to today’s need. As all we know, traditional file systems store data in hierarchical structures consisting of directories and subdirectories with a hierarchy of nested folders, subfolders, and files. The consequence is a very complex tree structure that makes it challenging to manage a large set of files. When the amount of data grows, the general file system performance and associated storage degrade dramatically.

Access method with Object Storage

Standard file systems have only basic metadata to describe files, such as the person who created it, file name, date of creation, last modification, and file type. This limited number of metadata associated with the file does not offer sufficient information for efficiently managing a large volume of unstructured data. Vice versa, Object Storage (note1) systems can store data known as objects in a flat address space with a rich set of metadata attached to the information.

Metadata gives the users the context and content related to the information. Applications can easily search data without knowing specific filenames, dates, or positions. In addition, it is also possible to use metadata information to apply policies for routing, retention and deletion, as well as automate storage management, including retention properties for regulatory compliance.

Another distinctive point for Object Storage compared to traditional storage is the access over the Internet Protocol (IP) interface through a web browser or directly through a standard application interface (API) and S3 widespread protocol.

Note1 Object is the fundamental unit of information storage. Object, metadata, and unique name are assigned when the object is created. Objects may be any size; for instance, a full complete movie can be stored as an object.

Object Storage Scale-Out architecture

From a hardware point of view, an Object Storage consists of multiple nodes; each node is nothing else than a standard X86 server that includes storage capacity and I/O (input/output) bandwidth. With these embedded resources present in every single node, it is possible to increase capacity and performance linearly.

Object Storage capacity grows by adding new nodes connected through a high-speed internal IP network.

The entire cluster of nodes is managed by the administrator as a single storage system. Contrary, to traditional storage systems, as capacity increases, performance decreases. Adding new disk performance tends to degrade, and once the storage system reaches its capacity expansion limits is necessary to buy another complete and independent unit creating an island of storage that is difficult to manage.

Object Storage data protection vs traditional RAID

Object Storage data protection offers much higher resilience and capacity efficiency than the traditional RAID approach. It is undoubtedly true that RAID technology offers ever-higher performance as it has become increasingly sophisticated. But at the end of the day, even the most sophisticated RAID architecture has to rely on hard disk performance. In the order of a few megabytes, RAID technology was born in an era where disks had relatively little capacity. Over the years, capacity increased significantly to reach the present 12 TB. In the meantime, the increase in HDD speed has failed to keep pace with the increase in capacity. As a result, RAID technology is generally quite inadequate for modern enterprise data protection and recovery needs.

Capacity expansion difference

Traditional storage systems bring a lot of storage waste and difficulties when they need to be expanded. To avoid these problems, companies regularly buy storage arrays much more extensive than they need. Ad example, when the logical unit number (LUN) is assigned to an application, LUNs cannot overgrow, and applications that run out of space will suffer performance problems or even crash outright until the LUN is resized. While if this storage expansion does not happen, much of the storage space purchased initially will be only a surplus of extra costs.

With an Object Storage architecture, the initial investment in capacity will be much smaller because it is not necessary to buy additional capacity for potential future use; in case of extra capacity necessities beyond expectations, new nodes will simply be added.

QStar’s Kaleidos, a New Generation of Object Storage

QStar’s Kaleidos Object Storage is a comprehensive solution able to address the relentless growth of data flexibly and efficiently with the lowest TCO present on the market. Designed for a wide range of applications and use cases, QStar Kaleidos Object Storage creates a limitless storage pool and tiering that can also embrace different storage technologies, including QStar’s Tape as NAS technology managed across S3 protocol for long-term archiving at exceptionally low cost. But not only that, archived data can also be migrated to the cloud automatically using specific policies. Additionally, it manages SMB and NFS protocols to integrate Windows and Linux environments natively. Lastly, through ILM management, it can migrate and archive data from the primary storage infrastructures based on specific rules to Kaleidos.

Significant storage and management cost reductions

QStar’s Kaleidos Object Storage eliminates the costs of managing traditional file and block storage systems. There are no drive groups, logical volumes, RAID tuning, storage provisioning, load balancing or disruptive data migrations. Through simple administrator-defined policies,

Kaleidos presents a single scalable storage pool that quickly and seamlessly scales to trillions of stored objects and an Exabyte of capacity.

QStar Kaleidos policies provide complete flexibility in configuring data protection and are designed for ultra-high security, and every Object can be copied three times and stored in physically separate availability nodes. Or you can write two copies to Object Storage and one to Tape as NAS ad example. Or again, two on Object, one in the cloud, yet another on Tape. The flexibility of the configuration allows you to choose the best possible design for your operational and safety needs. QStar's Kaleidos Object Storage is a flexible technology that can adapt to current and future needs and is a safe investment for your business.

Archive data authenticity and protection

QStar’s Kaleidos Object Storage provides a range of security features to meet regulatory or legal obligations; companies must be able to demonstrate that their archive records have not been altered. WORM (Write Once, Read Many) technologies prevent data's deliberate or accidental modification. To meet internal governance or compliance regulations, optional retention periods and security policies can be set for each bucked, and archive capacity can be restricted by bucked or can be set to expand dynamically. This prevents files from being altered or deleted until the retention time expires.

Simplifies file access to data in Object Storage and Cloud with easy integration, efficient archive management and protection.

Most cloud storage providers deliver storage capacity through S3 or specific API, making it difficult for enterprises that are used to accessing file data through standard file-sharing protocols to use cloud-based storage capacity. In addition to Object Storage technology, QStar has developed a solution to help customers integrate existing infrastructures based on standard SMB and NFS protocols with Object Storage technology and with most public cloud providers: QStar Cloud Gateway.

QStar Gateway for Object Storage and Cloud translates file access from SMB (Windows) and NFS (Linux) to S3 protocol or specific API.

Users and applications can quickly write and access data in the Cloud or Object Storage, as they are accustomed to. QStar Cloud Gateway offers an easy-to-use interface, allowing administrators to control the archive from anywhere at any time. The archive is presented as a network mountable file system for transparent integration with host applications or S3 connection, tailored for optimal performance, higher security, and fast recovery.

QStar’s Tape Object Storage technology

An innovative solution that can drastically reduce storage costs and guarantee unprecedented security. QStar’s Kaleidos offers an optional hybrid architecture that uses disks and Flash/Tape, integrating the two technologies into a traditional Object Storage system. This way, customers enjoy the best of both technologies: fast data access (disks) and extremely low operating and storage costs (tape).

This hybrid and scalable storage solution can be used to archive unlimited amounts of information securely and cost-effectively. QStar was the first vendor to introduce on the market this hybrid technology that integrates an object store tape library for the lowest-cost long-term data preservation.

Objects stored in the Kaleidos hybrid architecture are read precisely as standard Object Storage protocols via HTTP, S3, and REST API, even though the data is stored on tape. Users not only do not know that the information they are accessing is stored on tape and not on disk (object storage) but thanks to a sophisticated flash cache that works as a front-end, the performance in reading and writing is like a traditional Object Storage. In addition, the Object Storage can be seamlessly integrated into existing Linux and Windows infrastructures without changes for the applications or users through the QStar Cloud Gateway solution.

Object Storage, Cloud Gateway and Tape as NAS technology are available either as complete systems or through the Software Defined Storage model.

QStar’s Tape Object Storage allows you to get the best of two technologies in a single interoperable environment. This unique platform offers a unified single view of all data stored, provides not only an advanced modern Object Storage system but also includes a transparent data mover technology that can act through multiple locations, tiers and infrastructures; lastly, at the back end, there is an LTO tape library with the LTFS format for cold data long terms data archiving. Objects stored within the Tape Object Storage technology platform will be accessed precisely as objects, even if stored in the tape library. This flexible Cloud Hybrid Storage platform uses disks and tape technologies in combination or separately. It is unnecessary to force the two technologies to work together, which can be done a second time or never. You can only use disk-based Object Storage or combine the two technologies into a single logical entity.

Object Storage technology eliminates the complexity and scalability challenges of a hierarchical file system with folders and directories. It allows you to easily archive mandatory regulatory data that must be retained for long periods. An intelligent solution to reduce costs and increase the efficiency and security of your data in one go. Object Storage can efficiently meet the needs of many different use cases across multiple IT environments. Object Storage is the emerging technology for large content repositories offering a highly scalable and cost-effective storage platform to support various businesses and industries.

As always, I am available for any further information on the topics covered in my articles.

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