{"id":1851,"date":"2016-06-20T08:33:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T07:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/?p=1851"},"modified":"2016-09-25T20:41:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T19:41:45","slug":"an-array-based-on-containers-its-like-storage-for-millenials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/2016\/06\/an-array-based-on-containers-its-like-storage-for-millenials\/","title":{"rendered":"StorageOS &#8211; An array based on containers? It&#8217;s like storage for millenials!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I managed to catch up with the guys from StorageOS, a new container-based storage company, headquartered in London. I found out about them at a London Storage Beers event a few weeks ago, and my first question was, what the hell is container-based storage, and how does it work?!<\/p>\n<p>They started from the premise (yes that&#8217;s actually the correct use of the word premise!), that if you want to build a storage system <i>FOR<\/i> containers, what better way to do it than to build it <i>FROM<\/i> containers. StorageOS therefore offer what they describe as &#8220;full enterprise storage array functionality, delivered by software, on a pay-as-you-go basis&#8221;. They also plan to offer a <a href=\"http:\/\/storageos.com\/pricing\/\" target=\"_blank\">free-forever Developer tier<\/a>, which includes everything except HA functionality which you would obviously need for production usage!<\/p>\n<h5>StorageOS Announcement<\/h5>\n<p>So the good news is, today (Monday 20th June 2016) StorageOS are announcing the release of their Beta at <a href=\"http:\/\/2016.dockercon.com\" target=\"_blank\">DockerCon<\/a>, so you can now <a href=\"http:\/\/storageos.com\/index.php\/product\/\" target=\"_blank\">download and test out their new storage platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1848\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Stack.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1848\" class=\" wp-image-1848\" src=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Stack.png\" alt=\"The StorageOS Stack\" width=\"350\" height=\"255\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Stack.png 476w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Stack-150x109.png 150w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Stack-300x219.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1848\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The StorageOS Stack<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You can deploy this StorageOS software anywhere from bare metal to containers:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1849\" style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Locations.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1849\" class=\"wp-image-1849\" src=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Locations.png\" alt=\"StorageOS - It's software, so it runs anywhere! \" width=\"450\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Locations.png 615w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Locations-150x93.png 150w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOS-Locations-300x187.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1849\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">It&#8217;s software, so it runs anywhere!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Appliances for some of the larger clouds are in the works, but will not be available on day zero.<\/p>\n<p>They can then consume any back-end storage, from SSD, HDDs and virtual drives, to EBS volumes, object stores, etc. You then pool all of capacity\u00a0from all devices into a capacity pool, which is <a href=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/2016\/03\/words-mean-things-apparently-deduplication-myths-explored\/\" target=\"_blank\">deduped<\/a>, encrypted, and available across all nodes, and carve out volumes to present to systems like Docker through their own native Docker driver, or (slightly oddly) iSCSI \/ FC!!! They even have VAAI support in development!<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I think it&#8217;s a pretty interesting product. At first look it feels a bit like a traditional array in a container package, much like if you containerised an enterprise app, then just utilised as a traditional array with some container plugins, instead of being very targeted and container-specific. StorageOS do have an OS driver to let you mount their volumes direct from containers, but there are other things out there today which do that anyway (e.g. <a href=\"https:\/\/clusterhq.com\/flocker\/introduction\/\" target=\"_blank\">Flocker<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>I would say their messaging is a little inconsistent at the moment, and adding things like FC integration early on feels a bit odd if they&#8217;re positioning themselves as a container play. They do however state clearly that they&#8217;re targeting enterprises and want to make the on-boarding process as simple and friction-less as possible. I do worry that this &#8220;all things to all people&#8221; approach could be a wee bit risky at this early stage, and being more laser focused in the short to medium term would allow them to differentiate more.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/charge.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1850 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/charge-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"StorageOS Cloud\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/charge-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/charge-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/charge.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The founders were very specific when they stated that they were building a clustered array with synchronous remote replicas, not a distributed storage array. Async replication is coming, which will be critical to maintaining performance in a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud setup. I really like the fact that you can stretch the same hybrid storage environment between your on-premises and cloud infrastructure using a single storage solution. This same solution can actually be used to span multiple public clouds as well, providing a resilient storage solution between say AWS and Azure, all of which is deduped and encrypted of course! This could be very interesting indeed, as customers look to protect their workloads from large public outages!<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the StorageOS\u00a0software is built (as you would expect these days) with APIs at the heart of everything. Even the modern GUI is really just based on API calls to the back end.<\/p>\n<h5>The Tekhead Take<\/h5>\n<p>Anyway, enough gabbing\u2026 It&#8217;s still early days, but the storage experience of the founders is certainly solid! Who better than ex-storage admins to provide a product that works well for storage admins?! I&#8217;d say there&#8217;s a good chance of this becoming a pretty cool product in the future, so definitely one to watch!<\/p>\n<p>You can find a link to their website and beta sign up here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/storageos.com\/index.php\/product\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/storageos.com\/index.php\/product\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/hipster-approved.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1853 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/hipster-approved-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"StorageOS hipster-approved storage\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/hipster-approved-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/hipster-approved-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/hipster-approved.jpg 590w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I managed to catch up with the guys from StorageOS, a new container-based storage company, headquartered in London. I found out about them at a London [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_focuskw":"StorageOS","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"Introduction to the new container based storage startup, StorageOS. Learn more about the technology and use cases for this innovative new storage company!","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Announcement: An array based on #containers? It's like #storage for millennial! #StorageOS #DockerCon","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[337,524,449],"tags":[661,699,223,342,769,332,842,843,839,841,525,189,840],"class_list":["post-1851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-docker-2","category-startup-spotlight","category-storage","tag-array","tag-aws","tag-cloud","tag-containers","tag-deduplication","tag-docker","tag-dockercon","tag-encryption","tag-flocker","tag-microservices","tag-startup","tag-storage","tag-storageos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/wp-uploads\/www.tekhead.org\/2016\/06\/StorageOSLogo1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l3lU-tR","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1851"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1958,"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions\/1958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhead.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}