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ARCHITECTS LEAD THE NEXT GENERATION
OF DATA-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS
Rapid delivery of modern applications demands an open, software-defined, scale-out storage platform
TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Today’s application architects face significant change on all fronts. Asked to deliver a new era of
social, mobile, and big data applications, they must do so at a time when the entire application
stack is shifting around them. To successfully deliver modern applications, application architects
must identify and build upon technologies that support their demanding requirements, while also
future-proofing the enterprise.
DATA: A KEY CHALLENGE FOR ARCHITECTS DELIVERING MODERN
APPLICATIONS
Social, mobile, and big data applications play an increasingly important role within the enterprise
application portfolio. These new applications types bring with them requirements that differ in many
ways from those of traditional enterprise applications. One distinguishing factor for these new applications is their voracious appetite for unstructured data, including images, video, documents, and text.
One of the first challenges faced by architects delivering these applications is simply determining
where to put all this data so that it may be easily accessed by applications. For example, modern,
data-driven applications depend on the ability to easily and securely accept and share content (at
scale) via the Internet. For more traditional applications, and for administrative uses across all
applications, support for traditional file protocols is required.
In addition, architects need a data platform that doesn’t limit their capabilities. In recent years, application architects have seen infrastructure evolve from physical to virtual to cloud. They’ve lived through
the emergence of highly distributed architectures for both applications and data. They see new languages, frameworks, and components emerging in droves—powered by the innovation of open source
communities. They need a storage platform that spans all of these environments and technologies.
SERVICE-ORIENTED DATA PLATFORMS: ENABLING THE NEXT GENERATION
OF APPLICATIONS
Today’s architects need an application-centric platform for unstructured data storage. This new
platform must:
•Be service-oriented to support a variety of access protocols.
•Allow architects to work directly with data as objects via standard HTTP-based services to ensure
the rapid development of modern applications.
•Be compatible with traditional file access protocols (e.g., CIFS and NFS) to support the seamless
integration of existing tools, processes, and systems.
•Include out-of-the-box support for up-and-coming tools like Hadoop for in-place analysis of data.
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•Provide extreme scalability so architects can start projects small and scale them out as needed.
•Be fully supported in a variety of deployment environments so architects can port applications
from the datacenter to the cloud and vice versa.
•Provide automatic replication of data within and between deployment environments for reliability
and disaster recovery.
In addition, architects need these options to be available via a single, unified platform to simplify
maintenance and administration.
“
The Cornell Center for
Advanced Computing
(CAC) uses Red Hat
Storage to support
our Institute of of
Biotechnology and Life
Science Technologies,
which needed a storage
platform robust
enough to handle data
produced by Genomics,
Proteomics and Imaging
technologies. With
Red Hat Storage, we
have gained a highly
scalable and reliable
storage solution that
has allowed us to
adapt to our growing IT
needs while remaining
cost-effective.”
JANES VANEE
IT DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR
BIOTECHNOLOGY AND LIFE SCIENCES
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
As stewards of innovation within their enterprises, architects prefer open source solutions that tap
into the power of the community. They loathe being locked into proprietary hardware with its slow
vendor upgrade cycles. Instead, they need software-based solutions deployable on industry-standard hardware. Above all, they want solutions that are future-proof, aligned with the great forces
that are transforming IT, namely commoditization, cloud computing, and big data.
BUILDING THE FUTURE WITH RED HAT STORAGE
For these reasons and more, Red Hat Storage Server is the data platform of choice for savvy application and solution architects. An open-source, software-based storage platform, Red Hat Storage
Server is designed to enable the next generation of data-driven applications.
By pooling cloud, virtual, and on-premise data under a single global namespace behind a full complement of APIs, Red Hat Storage Server leverages an enterprise’s existing infrastructure while establishing the foundation for flexible, limitless, data-driven applications. It’s built on proven open source
technologies such as GlusterFS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and sets the bar for the future of data
storage for the enterprise.
INCREASED ARCHITECTURAL FLEXIBILITY
With Red Hat Storage Server, application architects can easily construct a converged data platform
that consolidates file, object, and cloud storage—supporting all of the enterprise’s unstructured and
semi-structured data needs.
It also allows capacity to be easily added to the unified storage pool as the need arises—without
downtime and without disruption to running applications. This enables organizations to start with
small Red Hat Storage Server deployments and scale incrementally as applications grow. And
adding nodes to a Red Hat Storage Server environment not only expands storage capacity but also
increases performance by providing additional input/output bandwidth.
In addition, Red Hat Storage Server includes built-in high availability and disaster recovery, ensuring high levels of application reliability both on-premise and in the cloud—without specialized infrastructure or developer effort. And because it automatically replicates data across multiple storage
servers in multiple locations, it can be configured to automatically maintain the desired level of replication. These features allow the platform to protect against individual instance and entire availability zone failures in public and private cloud environments.
ACCELERATED CONTENT-DRIVEN APPLICATION DELIVERY
Application architects can accelerate the delivery of content-driven applications, while maintaining
compatibility with existing datacenter tools and technologies, because Red Hat Storage Server supports a wide variety of access protocols.
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TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW Architects lead the next generation of data-driven applications
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It also supports service- and object-based access to all stored data via HTTP and REST; therefore,
architects can create flexible, loosely coupled systems that developers can more easily implement.
In addition, users and applications can access data via the SMB, NFS, and POSIX standards, allowing for effortless integration into existing processes and with existing systems. And no matter the
access protocol, Red Hat Storage Server delivers the scalability and security required to support
web-scale content sharing.
Support for big data applications is also provided. A Hadoop plug-in enables compatibility with the
Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), allowing Hadoop and other data-intensive applications to be
run directly atop storage nodes for low-latency and high-throughput access to stored files and objects.
DEPLOYMENT IN AND ACROSS DISPARATE ENVIRONMENTS
Red Hat Storage Server is easily deployed both behind the corporate firewall and in the cloud,
enabling a hybrid enterprise storage cloud. By incorporating physical, virtualized, and cloud
resources, the product eliminates the need for disparate storage platforms, simplifying the storage
environment and dramatically reducing the operational cost and complexity of supporting today’s
diverse applications.
In addition, customers can take advantage of an x86 server infrastructure. Proprietary storage solutions utilize sole-source hardware and a closed-source embedded software stack, locking customers
into a proprietary pricing model where each incremental expansion commands a significant premium
over the equivalent industry-standard component. By contrast, the cost of commodity components is
driven ever-downward by marketplace pressures, widening this gap with each passing year.
Red Hat Storage Server is compatible with more than 75 off-the-shelf server models, allowing
infrastructure organizations to achieve faster time-to-value through shorter decision cycles and
streamlined procurement processes. Furthermore, by supporting a wide variety of infrastructure
configurations, Red Hat Storage Server gives infrastructure organizations the freedom to choose
the right hardware to meet a given set of application and business requirements.
RAPID INNOVATION
Since the release of the Apache web server in 1995, open source software has driven rapid enterprise IT innovation, including the development of today’s cloud computing technologies. Proprietary
vendors, mired in lengthy release cycles, remain focused on expanding deployments and upselling
customers. They rarely deliver the innovation companies need to gain a competitive advantage.
Community-based development enables customers to exchange ideas, share expertise, and directly
participate in the process of creating solutions to best suit their needs. And with Red Hat, organizations get the best of both worlds – the innovation of the open source community along with a
commitment to the quality standards required for reliable 24x7 datacenter operations.
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TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW Architects lead the next generation of data-driven applications
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TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW Architects lead the next generation of data-driven applications
FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF
DATA-CENTRIC APPLICATIONS
Architects must rethink how storage is incorporated into their applications as data plays an increasingly important role in the development and delivery of today’s modern applications. To deliver them
successfully, architects are taking a page out of the cloud computing playbook and turning to open,
scale-out storage software running on industry-standard servers.
Red Hat Storage Server is the leading open source, software-defined storage solution. It lays the
foundation for agile applications architecture by unifying file, object, and cloud-based data onto
a single platform able to span physical, virtual, and cloud-based resources. With Red Hat Storage
Server, application architects can more quickly and confidently deliver long-lasting applications
that minimize cost, complexity, and risk while increasing architectural flexibility.
For more information on Red Hat Storage, visit www.redhat.com/storage.
ABOUT RED HAT
Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, using a community-powered approach
to provide reliable and high-performing cloud, virtualization, storage, Linux, and middleware technologies.
Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. Red Hat is an S&P company
with more than 70 offices spanning the globe, empowering its customers’ businesses.
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