While Thanksgiving wrapped up just last week, it’s always a good idea to reflect and give thanks for the parts of your IT environment that make your job easier.
Things like protocols that get along so that workgroups can work together, data-in-flight being secure so there are no worries about sending data over the internet, snapshots that can be saved forever on less expensive storage, freeing up your primary storage for active work, and the ability to have your on-prem data center extend to both GCP and AWS, all on the same file system, so you can enable your cloud strategy.
Below are some of the enhancements Qumulo has released over the past quarter that make all of these things work better together.
SMBv3
Qumulo SMB is genuine SMB. It complies with Microsoft’s detailed SMB/CIFS specification and, like everything we do, it’s distributed across every node in the cluster and designed for high performance and high resiliency. We did this to optimize SMB for our modern, distributed file system.
A key requirement for this enhancement was to have the SMB protocol be distributed since Qumulo’s file system has a shared-nothing architecture. This means that all functionality resides on each and every node including the SMB protocol. This enables robust performance under all load conditions. We have implemented SMB and all other protocols at the file system level versus the protocol layer.
Also, having the protocols distributed and at file system level enables us to do cross-protocol permissions. Cross-protocol permissions manage file permissions across SMB (Windows) and NF (Linux). This allows users to work together across protocols without worrying about permissions models. Cross-protocol permissions also simplify cluster management which should make our customers very happy.
Qumulo’s SMBv3 is different than some implementations, especially those based on Samba where there is one client for SMB access, which creates a bottleneck and limits the ability to do cross-protocol permissions. When comparing Qumulo file storage with other storage offerings, check to see if an agent or client side software software is required. If agents are required, the implementation is not distributed, resulting in bottlenecks; it will also likely not have cross-protocol permissions.
SMBv3 Encryption
As part of last quarter’s release, SMBv3 is now the default protocol, and we have implemented encryption on the wire. Encryption on the wire is the process of protecting sensitive data while it is sent from one source over the network or the internet to another source. If someone is able to gain access to your data as it is sent from one location to another, they will not be able to decipher it since it is encrypted. Yout data is safe with Qumulo!
Replication snapshots
Imagine that you are running a busy cluster in a media and entertainment company and you are taking regular snapshots. Today these snapshots all reside on the primary cluster and over time they all get deleted. You say to yourself, “I wish I could save the snapshots for a long time so that I can always get a previous version back and not use my primary storage.” With the release of Qumulo’s new replication snapshots, you now can do this!
Qumulo’s replication snapshot enable users to save point-in-time consistent snapshots on a target cluster. The policies for the source and target can be different with different retention timeframes, with the policies all being managed from one location. This enables users to set longer retention periods for snapshots on the target, which is often less expensive archive storage, freeing up storage on the source, which is often high performance more expensive storage. You can even keep your snapshots on the target indefinitely, if desired, which could eliminate the need for a full-feature backup solution. With replication snapshots you can recover specific files or directories going as far back as you like. Wish granted!
Qumulo is now on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Last but not least! Qumulo’s file system is now available on the GCP Marketplace as well as AWS to provide you not only with a choice in cloud vendors, but the ability to easily implement a multi-cloud strategy. Stay tuned for more on this.
These are just a few of the items that were released last quarter. AsTo learn more about the Qumulo’s enterprise-proven, modern distributed cloud file system go to www.qumulo.com.
Qumulo was recently named a leader in the Gartner 2019 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage – again! To learn more about Qumulo’s enterprise-proven, modern distributed cloud file system go to www.qumulo.com.
