Automating Storage Infrastructure with ViPR Controller: IT as a Service in Action

We live in a world where the development of software-defined solutions (software defined), the transition of IT from managing technical parameters to the level of solving business problems, and removing unnecessary links in organizational processes are real trends that are actively changing the landscape of the industry.



Imagine a fairly trivial situation: there is a company (for example, a bank) in which there is a need for urgent development of a certain application. The developer writes applications to administrators, they manually enter the array and allocate the necessary space. Familiar circuit? Unfortunately, in the case of large corporations, it ceases to work: there are more tasks, the efficiency of their implementation is more critical, and the volume of information increases by orders of magnitude. In these conditions, waiting, relatively speaking, for 2 weeks, until admins allocate the necessary capacities is unacceptable. And, if it is possible to decompose data manually into 10 arrays, then, when arrays are 100, the question of process automation arises as an edge.

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These problems are solved by ViPR Controller — a simple and smart software that installs in addition to the storage system and automates the management of them. How this happens and why the business needs such an approach is described in our post.



Idea

The ViPR Controller solution in the data flow plays the role of a kind of railroad arrow (control plane), while the data plane remains the same - these are arrays, switches and servers already existing in the company. Those. it does not participate in the data stream itself, but controls it. ViPR Controller connects to all levels of the system (arrays, network, server), the specialist assigns him the logical structure of virtual arrays (example: array №1 in Moscow, array №2 in St. Petersburg), and then indicates which physical components will be Each of them.

The next step is to define a set of services (service-oriented architecture in action). After we have built the management infrastructure and defined the virtual structure of the arrays, we create a catalog of services depending on the types of tasks that are set in our company.



As a result, this directory can be used by all employees who need to solve a particular task. In order, for example, to develop an application, it is only necessary to request a certain level of service (gold / silver, protected / unprotected, etc.) in the directory using the self service portal. The required amounts of memory are provided promptly, so there is no need to wait for the administrators to react.



Thus, by solving technical issues, we rise to the level of solving business problems by IT, and in addition, we significantly reduce the number of links in the organizational chain and save valuable time.



Technology

Each storage vendor has a specific set of controls. The main technical “trick” of ViPR Controller is that it is equipped with all the libraries necessary to access arrays of various manufacturers (EMC, Hitachi, IBM, HP, etc.), moreover, there is a wonderful tool out of the box - the library working with Openstack Cinder , de facto, which has become one of the key storage management tools in the current world and allows working with arrays of many manufacturers with the help of drivers developed by these manufacturers. All that needs to be done is to define a common logical structure. ViPR Controller through the software native for each array (or using Cinder as an interlayer) will do all the “black” work - select the volumes on the necessary arrays and “cut” them in the optimal way to solve a specific task.



Inside virtual arrays built with the help of ViPR Controller, there can be different pools and memory types (fast flash, slow disks - depending on the specific tasks). In the resulting hierarchy, we can subsequently use performance analysis tools. Moreover, such a concept as Storage Silos can now be forgotten, since the system is forcibly trying to dispose of all available resources evenly depending on the level of the service / virtual array / virtual pool, etc.



By the way, not only storage can be connected to ViPR Controller - it is also able to manage servers and use them for additional capacity. But this is a topic for a separate post.



Uniqueness

Attempts to create a system similar to ViPR Controller have already been made by IT vendors, but for various reasons these projects have not yet had much success. EMC began to actively promote the idea of ​​software-defined storage about a year ago, and ViPR Controller is currently an objectively unique solution on the market, because none of its analogs work with dissimilar storage systems from different manufacturers.



Why do you need it

First, the use of the ViPR Controller system greatly accelerates the execution of necessary tasks. The task, which can be solved in the “old-fashioned” way in several days or even weeks, with a configured ViPR Controller can be solved in minutes. As they say, "feel the difference." This is especially true for modern business problems, often requiring instant response.



Secondly, ViPR Controller is an excellent tool to protect the transparency of IT processes in an organization. In Russia at the moment this problem is not so acute, but in the West, IT transparency is becoming one of the most pressing topics in the industry. Let us give an example: the IT resources of a corporation are distributed “in the old manner” by the IT department. Developers have an urgent business task, they request the necessary resources from the IT service and get an answer "We will provide within two weeks." Without thinking twice, developers are buying the necessary power at Amazon on their own and for their money - good, it is relatively inexpensive, and solving the problem is mobile in such cases is much more important. As a result, people owning the intellectual property of a corporation deploy it on third-party resources, subject to frequent attacks by intruders. With ViPR Controller, there is no need to “go to Amazon”: it is much easier and more convenient to operate through the self-service portal without risking the security of valuable corporate information.



Thirdly, such an approach naturally saves the company costs due to the time spent by IT staff. The more power, the harder and more expensive to manage them, and ViPR Controller uses resources with maximum efficiency.



Fourthly, a single “umbrella” appears in the structure of IT processes, which covers a heterogeneous “iron”. For example, if a company uses storage systems from different manufacturers, each of them uses its own technology to integrate with other elements of the system. If you need to deploy, for example, monitoring, then it will need to be manually adapted to the technology of each storage vendor. ViPR Controller is compatible with all storage vendor technologies and builds them into an effective system, allowing you to manage monitoring, connect arrays with VMware products, deploy a private cloud, etc. through a single integration point.



Conclusion

Of course, in some cases, what ViPR Controller does can be done better by IT staff, but also, starting with a certain amount of information and a number of tasks, it just stops working. Ideal, but slow and costly ways of solving problems are replaced by good, fast and stable. Therefore, the reality is that behind the systems built on the prototype of ViPR Controller, the future of the industry.



In addition, modern development cycles do not tolerate the slowness inherent in the cumbersome hierarchy of many IT departments. And people increasingly believe in fast and high-quality solutions to business problems that are available within the capabilities of the “third platform”.



That is why the IT revolution is not in building up terabytes, but in using them most effectively for the benefit of business.



PS

And finally, “for dessert”: the ViPR Controller solution is available for free download in non-commercial use mode (http://russia.emc.com/cloud/vipr/try.htm/), so you can try all its benefits for free and without time constraints, and make sure that this is applicable to those business problems and problems that arise or may arise in your work.