SoftNAS Named Best Cloud NAS Solution in Network World Review

Network World recently reviewed software-based NAS solutions and concluded:

If you’re looking for a cloud-based solution, SoftNAS is your best bet.

SoftNAS 3.3.3, the latest version of our award-winning Cloud NAS solution, differs from other solutions reviewed by offering both software-based and on-premise versions. It’s available using Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure and most recently, CenturyLink Cloud.

Eric Geier, freelance tech writer with Network World, provides a thorough review, citing the following about how SoftNAS is typically deployed:

Commonly, SoftNAS is deployed in AWS VPCs serving files to EC2 based servers within the same VPCs. SoftNAS also supports a hybrid cloud model where one SoftNAS instance is deployed on-premise on a local PC in your office and a second instance in an AWS VPC. In this hybrid model, replication occurs from the local SoftNAS to cloud-based SoftNAS for cloud-based disaster recovery.

SoftNAS is quick and easy to configure and setup in minutes, something we strive to achieve with all our products. Eric alluded to this during the review:

Once we configured the EC2 instance of SoftNAS, we could access the web GUI, which they call the SoftNAS StorageCenter, via the Amazon IP or DNS address. After logging in, you’re prompted to register and accept the terms. Then you’re presented with a Getting Started Checklist, which is useful in ensuring you get everything setup.

Read the full review.

Better yet, give it a try yourself.

SoftNAS 30-day Free Trial

Learn more: https://www.softnas.com
Twitter: @SoftNAS
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/softnas

Amazon EFS vs. GlusterFS vs. SoftNAS Cloud NAS: Which Performs Best?

by Buurst Staff | AWS

Comparing Amazon EFS vs. GlusterFS vs. SoftNAS Cloud NAS. Great read from Nathan Wilkerson, Cloud Engineer with Metal Toad around NFS performance on AWS based on the upcoming Amazon EFS (Elastic File System). As Amazon EFS is not generally available, this is a good early look at a performance comparison among Amazon EFS vs. GlusterFS vs. SoftNAS Cloud NAS.

According to Nathan:

SoftNAS had by far the best performance. Its cost is higher for low capacities, but will be important when latency is paramount. At higher capacities the benefits of SoftNAS and lower overall cost are a clear winner, I would consider SoftNAS.

SoftNAS spends a lot of time testing its products, reviewing customer feedback and welcomes Nathan’s performance results.

But is SoftNAS actually more expensive? NO. Let me explain.

1) 100GB works well for performance tests but is not a realistic capacity point for most customers real-world use or a pricing analysis. On average, SoftNAS customers tend to use 10TB – 20TB, and frequently surpass 100TB.

2) SoftNAS is less expensive than AWS EFS at 6TB and is dramatically more cost effective at higher capacities.

3) Not only is SoftNAS cost effective at real-world capacities (even with EBS pricing), you get all the benefits of an enterprise-class NAS that is available in all AWS regions and which includes snapshots, de-duplication, data protection, multi-tier caching and compression.

Pricing: 100GB

The configuration in Nathan’s tests used 100GB with a pair of instances for High Availability. SoftNAS offers 100GB storage at no charge for each SoftNAS instance when launched as Community AMIs. See below the pricing for each vendor at 100GB usable capacity for EBS General Purpose SSD, per month (as tested in the Metal Toad benchmarks).

It’s also worth noting that for the pricing comparisons in Nathan’s blog he used 200GB for SoftNAS compared to 100GB for EFS and Gluster. SoftNAS offers stack prices for both small and medium EC2 instances. The medium instance will provide a better performance, but speed is not always the objective. Offering the flexibility to configure based on what you want to accomplish is a cornerstone of the SoftNAS approach.

It’s also worth noting that for the pricing comparisons in Nathan’s blog, he used 200GB for SoftNAS compared to 100GB for EFS and Gluster. SoftNAS offers stack prices for both small and medium EC2 instances. The medium instance will provide a better performance, but speed is not always the objective. Offering the flexibility to configure based on what you want to accomplish is a cornerstone of the SoftNAS approach.

Pricing: scaling up to 20TB with SSD

Lets look at the comparisons as you scale out the capacities up to 20TB with both backed by SSD. The following table shows the cost comparison of 20TB for SoftNAS with High Availability and AWS EFS.

The following graph compares SoftNAS with HA and AWS EFS for capacities from 200GB through 20TB. At 20TB, SoftNAS price per GB is $.0.13 vs EFS at $0.30. The conclusion is that EFS is less at low capacity due to lack of EC2 and software costs, whereas when capacity increases the costs of storage outweighs the overhead costs. The breakeven point is 6TB and SoftNAS is progressively cheaper as capacity grows. Additionally, you get all the benefits of an enterprise-class NAS that is available in all AWS regions and which includes snapshots, de-duplication,data protection, multi-tier caching and compression.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that SoftNAS offers a high amount of configurability. You can choose between performance vs. cost, options for L1 and L2 read cache, options for write cache, and a ton of other useful features, including CIFS with Active Directory integration.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the flexibility of SoftNAS means you can choose not only SSD-backed storage, but also mix in less expensive alternatives like EBS Magnetic ($0.05/GB) and highly-durable S3 backed object storage ($0.03/GB).

So who performs best when comparing Amazon EFS vs. GlusterFS vs. SoftNAS Cloud NAS?

SoftNAS delivers the most storage flexibility and most powerful feature set for protecting business data in the AWS cloud, and provides great price/performance. Best of all, SoftNAS is available on the most popular cloud and premise-based platforms today (AWS, Azure, CenturyLink, and VMware vSphere), keeping you in control of your business-critical data and your business.

Why not try SoftNAS and see how it performs in your environment?

Why SoftNAS?

SoftNAS provides direct connectivity to cloud storage providing a private connection to resources owned by your organization. This eliminates the managed storage problems of inconsistent performance by noisy neighbors. In addition, SoftNAS adds value by placing data in the most appropriate location for increased application performance.

SoftNAS Performance

Introducing SoftNAS 3.3 – Greater Security & Data Protection

by Buurst Staff | AWS

Cloud Computing has become core to how businesses operate today. Business-critical applications, services and data must be available 24x7x365 in a highly available and easy-to-deploy environment.

SoftNAS has just released version 3.3 of SoftNAS. The 3.3 version contains a host of new features, as well as major performance enhancements .

New Features and Enhancements:

AWS Cross-zone High-availability for Private VPCs provides high-availability through SNAP™ HA with private IPs on AWS

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Instant Writeable SnapClones™ – Create instant read/write snapshot clones of production data that do not occupy additional disk space, and conveniently browse SnapClone snapshots from an external NFS or CIFS share.

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Consistent Storage Pool Backup and Recovery – Eliminate the need for scripting to conveniently backup and restore consistent SoftNAS storage pools, using multiple EBS snapshots for an added layer of data protection.
Cloud Gateway Cache for S3 Compatible Object Storage provides primary data access performance for S3 storage with redundancy and HA for S3 even with limited Internet bandwidth
Automatic Drive Sparing automatically protects data by rebuilding a failed drive without manual intervention
Consistent Backup/Restore for AWS uses EBS snapshots integrated in StorageCenter UI

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Windows Previous Versions Support integration with storage snapshots enables users to recover permanently deleted files, view or restore a version of a file that has been saved over, and compare file versions side-by-side without administrative assistance

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Support for AWS GovCloud S3 allows use of AWS GovCloud S3 as a true NAS with all SoftNAS features
Updated Performance Graphs now display IOPs in StorageCenter UI

Can’t wait? Get started now with SoftNAS 3.3

Learn More

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of EBS Backup to S3

by Buurst Staff | AWS

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of EBS Backup to S3

Developing a comprehensive strategy for backing up and restoring data is not a simple task. In some industries, regulatory requirements for data security, privacy, and records retention can be important factors to consider when developing a backup strategy.

EBS Advantages

Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) provides many features such as high durability and reliability, encryption, provisioned IOPS, and point-in-time snapshots—amongst others. The built-in volume snapshot feature is a good option for backing up data.

Like all things AWS, Amazon has many options for creating backups. If you setup your EC2 instance to use EBS, you can simply create a snapshot of your volume from the AWS Console. These EBS snapshots are incremental backups that persist on Amazon’s S3. Incremental means that only the blocks that have changed since your last snapshot are saved.

Problem

EBS snapshots are really slick, but manually creating snapshots from the AWS Console isn’t a good solution if your goal is to have daily, hourly, or snapshots on a customizable timeframe.

In order for any backup to be useful, the backed-up content has to be crash consistent. This means that write IOs are quiesced and write caches flushed. Enterprise backup software has solved that problem for years, but direct use of EBS Snapshots for backup does not.

Alternative

You can create your own services using scripts and command line tools. But to do this you need to have the knowledge and experience of writing shell scripts, scheduling and executing. The snippet of script below provides details about the server in the snapshot.

With ease of use in mind, the next version of SoftNAS will include a number of features that will allow for a faster and more convienient backup and archival process.

Learn more about Buurst SoftNAS.

How to Improve the Security of AWS Storage

by Buurst Staff | AWS

When AWS introduced default Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) settings across Amazon EC2 regions, taking full advantage of the VPC benefits became easier and simpler. This change brought a great opportunity, allowing customers to take advantage of the VPC to customize and design their networks and differ their workloads between public and private subnets. Thus, customers now have more control over their resources, networking, routing, and security.

So how do you improve the security of AWS storage?

Instead of requiring proprietary hardware or an outside datacenter, SoftNAS extends native AWS storage (EBS, S3) to create an enterprise-grade, full-featured cloud NAS filer, including SNAP HA with patent-pending Elastic HA technology with automatic failover that keeps data flowing, even when disaster strikes, an instance fails or an entire AWS availability zone isn’t available.

Nothing is more critical to the continuity of your business than your data. Some security-conscious customers or those with susceptible data avoid solutions like Elastic HA, which utilizes public IPs, exposing storage to Internet-accessible addresses.

Other customers concerns include:

Cost of inbound bandwidth of the storage
Storage is located on a public subnet on a VPC

With these customers in mind, the next version of SoftNAS will include several features that will allow for greater deployment flexibility and security.

SoftNAS offers the mission-critical data protection and high availability required for the non-stop operation of your business. Simple, powerful, and agile, SoftNAS is easy to try, buy and deploy across public, private, and hybrid clouds. SoftNAS for AWS enables customers to quickly and efficiently implement hybrid and pure cloud business solutions that ensure corporate data is always safe and available and applications do not experience downtime.

Network Security Groups Configuration in AWS

Network services can be set in the same manner as Premise instances, within the console after AWS setup. However, the simpler solution is to set your services and ports via the creation of Security Groups during setup. The Launch Instance manual setup wizard allows you to create a secure networking configuration prior to the first boot.

SoftNAS Security in the AWS Cloud

SoftNAS Enterprise builds upon Pure AWS storage infrastructures like EBS, S3, and SSD running within your own AWS account. Your data is always secure and totally under your control within your AWS virtual private cloud (VPC), never leaving the trusted AWS data center. Your data can also be fully encrypted and secured using AWS encryption of EBS and SoftNAS Enterprise encryption of S3 data.

Secure VPC Networking:

Secure NAS storage access routing within VPCs with complex routing tables and subnets.

HA for Private VPCs:

Private IPs for better VPC security in HA configurations.

360-degree Encryption™:

Data encryption all the time–at rest and in flight. Data-at-rest is encrypted through open-source Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKs). LUKs is accepted as the standard for encryption of stored data. Data-in-flight is encrypted for CIFS and NFS file protocols.

Dual Factor Authentication:

Prevent unauthorized access to SoftNAS management console with two-step authentication for SoftNAS StorageCenter through Google Authenticator.

Login Protection from Bots:

Human verification through Google reCAPTCHA prevents bots from programmatically gaining access to the SoftNAS Enterprise management console.

Large-scale Windows Filer with Active Directory:

Supports thousands of concurrent users with billions of files for enterprise-scale file server, VDI user file storage via CIFS/SMB 3 protocol.

Large-scale NFS Server:

Supports thousands of concurrent users with billions of files for enterprise-scale file server, user file storage via NFS 4 protocol.

Identity & Access Management (IAM):

Provide least privilege access control and management without use of access keys for HA setup and S3 cloud disks.

SoftNAS Enterprise Cloud NAS for AWS provides the performance, reliability, and fault tolerance required for mission-critical applications. SoftNAS offers the broadest range of storage options in terms of price vs. performance and backend storage selection, on-demand at a petabyte-scale across the AWS and Azure Marketplaces or on-premises.

How to Avoid Storage Downtime when AWS Reboots

by Buurst Staff | AWS

A new Xen vulnerability is forcing cloud service provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to reboot a portion of its EC2 fleet over the week (the second such reboot in 6 months). Such periodic maintenance is necessary—expected even—to maintain the best possible security; however, some IT departments are still scrambling to ensure business continuity and prevent negative business impact.

Pre-emptively architecting cloud infrastructure to include a highly available storage configuration is a well-known best practice, but doing so can be difficult and time consuming for the IT generalist.

With SoftNAS’s built-in cross-zone high-availability, designing for failure can be fast and simple during the zone reboot preparations.

SoftNAS SNAP HA™ delivers a low-cost, low-complexity solution for high-availability storage clustering that is easy to deploy and manage.

A robust set of HA capabilities protects against data center, availability zone, server, network and storage subsystem failures to keep businesses running without downtime.

SNAP HA for (AWS) includes patent-pending Elastic HA™ technology, providing NAS clients in any availability zone uninterrupted HA access to the storage cluster across availability zones.

In the event of an outage, such as the zone reboot, when Zone A is reset, SNAP HA would automatically fail over to Zone B and become the primary node. The rebooted, former primary instance, becomes the secondary instance until either a manual takeover to restore initial state, or another point of failure, when it would failover back to Zone A, which would once again become the primary controller.

Some security conscious customers or those with extremely sensitive data do avoid solutions like Elastic HA, which utilizes public IPs, exposing storage to Internet accessible addresses.

With these customers in mind, the next version of SoftNAS will include a number of features that will allow for greater deployment flexibility and security.

Follow SoftNAS on Twitter: @SoftNAS

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