CTERA – Storage The Way Your Users Want It

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Disclaimer: I recently attended Storage Field Day 22.  Some 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.

CTERA recently presented at Storage Field Day 22. You can see their videos from Storage Field Day 22 here, and download a PDF copy of my rough notes from here.

 

CTERA?

In a nutshell, CTERA is:

  • Enterprise NAS over Object
  • 100% Private
  • Multi-cloud, hybrid consistent
  • Delivers data placement policy and mobility
  • Caching, not tiering
  • Zero-trust

 

The Problem

So what’s the problem we’re trying to solve with unstructured data?

  • Every IT environment is hybrid
  • More data is being generated at the edge
  • Workload placement strategies are driving storage placement
  • Storage must be instrumented and accessible anywhere

Seems simple enough, but edge storage is hard to get right.

[image courtesy of CTERA]

What Else Do You Want?

We want a lot from our edge storage solutions, including the ability to:

  • Migrate data to cloud, while keeping a fast local cache
  • Connect branches and users over a single namespace
  • Enjoy a HQ-grade experience regardless of location
  • Achieve 80% cost saving with global dedupe and cloud economics.

 

The Solution?

CTERA Multi-cloud Global File System – a “software-defined file over object with distributed SMB/NFS edge caching and endpoint collaboration”.

[image courtesy of CTERA]

CTERA Architecture

  • Single namespace connecting HQ, branches and users with ACL support
  • Object-native backend with cache accelerated access for remote sites
  • Multi-cloud scale-out to customer’s private or public infrastructure
  • Source-based encryption and global deduplication
  • Multi-tenant administration scalable to thousands of sites
  • Data management ecosystem for content security, analytics and DevOps automation

[image courtesy of CTERA]

Use Cases?

  • NAS Modernisation – Hybrid Edge Filer, Object-based Filesystem, Elastic scaling, Built-in Backup & DR
  • Remote Workforce – Endpoint Sync, Share, Backup & Cached Drive Distributed VDI clusters Small-form-factor Filer Mobile Collaboration
  • Media – Large Dataset Handling, Ultra-Fast Cloud Sync, MacOS Experience, Cloud Streaming
  • Multi-site Collaboration – Global File System Distributed Sync Scalable Central Mgt.
  • Edge Data Processing – Integrated HCI Filers Distributed Data Analysis Machine-Generated Data
  • Container-native – Global File System Across Distributed Kubernetes Clusters and Tethered Cloud Services

 

Thoughts and Further Reading

It should come as no surprise that people expect data to be available to them everywhere nowadays. And that’s not just sync and share solutions or sneaker net products on USB drives. No, folks want to be able to access corporate data in a non-intrusive fashion. It gets worse for the IT department though, because your end users aren’t just “heavy spreadsheet users”. They’re also editing large video files, working on complicated technical design diagrams, and generating gigabytes of log files for later analysis. And it’s not enough to say “hey, can you download a copy and upload it later and hope that no-one else has messed with the file?”. Users are expecting more from their systems. There are a variety of ways to deal with this problem, and CTERA seems to have provided a fairly robust solution, with many ways of accessing data, collaborating, and storing data in the cloud and at the edge. The focus isn’t limited to office automation data, with key verticals such as media and entertainment, healthcare, and financial services all having solutions suited to their particular requirements.

CTERA’s Formula One slide is impressive, as is the variety of ways it works to help organisations address the explosion unstructured data in the enterprise. With large swathes of knowledge workers now working more frequently outside the confines of the head office, these kinds of solutions are only going to become more in demand, particularly those that can leverage cloud in an effective (and transparent) fashion. I’m excited to see what’s to come with CTERA. Check out Ray’s article for a more comprehensive view of what CTERA does.