Disclaimer: I recently attended Storage Field Day 18. My flights, accommodation and other expenses were paid for by Tech Field Day. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event. Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.
Cohesity recently presented at Storage Field Day 18. You can see their videos from Storage Field Day 18 here, and download a PDF copy of my rough notes from here.
The Cohesity Difference?
Cohesity covered a number of different topics in its presentation, and I thought I’d outline some of the Cohesity features before I jump into the meat and potatoes of my article. Some of the key things you get with Cohesity are:
- Global space efficiency;
- Data mobility;
- Data resiliency & compliance;
- Instant mass restore; and
- Apps integration.
I’m going to cover 3 of the 5 here, and you can check the videos for details of the Cohesity MarketPlace and the Instant Mass Restore demonstration.
Global Space Efficiency
One of the big selling points for the Cohesity data platform is the ability to deliver data reduction and small file optimisation.
- Global deduplication
- Modes: inline, post-process
- Archive to cloud is also deduplicated
- Compression
- Zstandard algorithm (read more about that here)
- Small file optimisation
- Better performance for reads and writes
- Benefits from deduplication and compression
Data Mobility
There’s also an excellent story when it comes to data mobility, with the platform delivering the following data mobility features:
- Data portability across clouds
- Multi-cloud replication and archival (1:many)
- Integrated indexing and search across locations
You also get simultaneous, multi-protocol access and a comprehensive set of file permissions to work with.
But What About Archives And Stuff?
Okay, so all of that stuff is really cool, and I could stop there and you’d probably be happy enough that Cohesity delivers the goods when it comes to a secondary storage platform that delivers a variety of features. In my opinion, though, it gets a lot more interesting when you have a look at some of the archival features that are built into the platform.
Flexible Archive Solutions
- Archive either on-premises or to cloud;
- Policy driven archival schedule for long term data retention
- Data an be retrieved to the same or a different Cohesity cluster; and
- Archived data is subject to further deduplication.
Data Resiliency and Compliance – ensures data integrity
- Erasure coding;
- Highly available; and
- DataLock and legal hold.
Achieving Compliance with File-level DataLock
In my opinion, DataLock is where it gets interesting in terms of archive compliance.
- DataLock enables WORM functionality at a file level;
- DataLock adheres to regulatory acts;
- Can automatically lock a file after a period of inactivity;
- Files can be locked manually by setting file attributes;
- Minimum and maximum retention times can be set; and
- Cohesity provides a unique RBAC role for Data Security administration.
DataLock on Backups
- DataLock enables WORM functionality;
- Prevent changes by locking Snapshots;
- Applied via backup policy; and
- Operations performed by Data Security administrators.
Ransomware Detection
Cohesity also recently announced the ability to look within Helios for Ransomware. The approach taken is as follows: Prevent. Detect. Respond.
Prevent
There’s some good stuff built into the platform to help prevent ransomware in the first place, including:
- Immutable file system
- DataLock (WORM)
- Multi-factor authentication
Detect
- Machine-driven anomaly detection (backup data, unstructured data)
- Automated alert
Respond
- Scalable file system to store years worth of backup copies
- Google-like global actionable search
- Instant mass restore
Thoughts and Further Reading
The conversation with Cohesity got a little spirited in places at Storage Field Day 18. This isn’t unusual, as Cohesity has had some problems in the past with various folks not getting what they’re on about. Is it data protection? Is it scale-out NAS? Is it an analytics platform? There’s a lot going on here, and plenty of people (both inside and outside Cohesity) have had a chop at articulating the real value of the solution. I’m not here to tell you what it is or isn’t. I do know that a lot of the cool stuff with Cohesity wasn’t readily apparent to me until I actually had some stick time with the platform and had a chance to see some of its key features in action.
The DataLock / Security and Compliance piece is interesting to me though. I’m continually asking vendors what they’re doing in terms of archive platforms. A lot of them look at me like I’m high. Why wouldn’t you just use software to dump your old files up to the cloud or onto some cheap and deep storage in your data centre? After all, aren’t we all using software-defined data centres now? That’s certainly an option, but what happens when that data gets zapped? What if the storage platform you’re using, or the software you’re using to store the archive data, goes bad and deletes the data you’re managing with it? Features such as DataLock can help with protecting you from some really bad things happening.
I don’t believe that data protection data should be treated as an “archive” as such, although I think that data protection platform vendors such as Cohesity are well placed to deliver “archive-like” solutions for enterprises that need to retain protection data for long periods of time. I still think that pushing archive data to another, dedicated, tier is a better option than simply calling old protection data “archival”. Given Cohesity’s NAS capabilities, it makes sense that they’d be an attractive storage target for dedicated archive software solutions.
I like what Cohesity have delivered to date in terms of a platform that can be used to deliver data insights to derive value for the business. I think sometimes the message is a little muddled, but in my opinion some of that is because everyone’s looking for something different from these kinds of platforms. And these kinds of platforms can do an awful lot of things nowadays, thanks in part to some pretty smart software and some grunty hardware. You can read some more about Cohesity’s Security and Compliance story here, and there’s a fascinating (if a little dated) report from Cohasset Associates on Cohesity’s compliance capabilities that you can access here. My good friend Keith Townsend also provided some thoughts on Cohesity that you can read here.