Storage

Exiting VMware to Eliminate High Storage Costs

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Exiting VMware to Eliminate High Storage Costs

Storage, an integral part of a VMware infrastructure, often consumes a hefty chunk of the IT budget, and exiting VMware to eliminate high storage costs may be the best strategy. Exiting VMware can reduce primary storage costs and investments in secondary storage like backup and archive. A VMware alternative can provide better ransomware resiliency and data protection, reducing backup software investments.

Most IT professionals think that high storage costs come from being forced to invest in high-performance dedicated all-flash arrays (AFA). VMware’s vSAN and Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) products were supposed to lower storage costs by enabling IT to use off-the-shelf storage media while maintaining enterprise-class features, performance, and availability. Both products fell well short of the goal and, in most cases, are as expensive as the legacy three-tier architecture.

Why Does VMware Have High Storage Costs?

So, what should storage realistically cost? A 15.3 TB NVMe SSD is priced at less than $1,500, meaning 300 TB of high-performance storage comes in at about $30,000.

Why, then, is it well over 5X to 10X that amount to add 300TB of flash capacity to a VMware environment? Dedicated arrays have to cover the cost of the components already in the environment (CPU power, networking, memory). HCI hasn’t lived up to expectations, either. These vendors still charge too much for their software, which doesn’t deliver the enterprise-class performance or capabilities that IT demands, so IT must overcompensate with more hardware and additional drives.

Decoding the High Storage Costs

The above mentioned, $30,000 should be the entire cost to add 300TBs of high-performance storage. Most customers have plenty of excess storage bays in their physical hosts, so they should be able to add these twenty drives without additional hardware costs.

If HCI vendors offered common sense licensing, there would be no additional software charge. The problem is that vSAN and Nutanix don’t have common sense licensing; they constantly charge for add-ons. From a technical perspective, they can’t easily handle adding a mixture of different storage device types to existing servers; they can’t deliver the hundreds of thousands of IOPS potential of the storage, and these solutions often lack the enterprise features that customers expect.

The combination of the failure of HCI to cut costs and the subsequent need for a high-end all-flash array (AFA), balloon the VMware storage budget. The cost of dedicated storage is negatively impacted by:

  1. Markup Pricing: Despite some genuine costs involved in their strategy, dedicated storage array vendors charge exorbitantly for their capacity.
  2. Performance Requirements: Their software inefficiencies necessitate powerful processors to maintain the array’s pace with the performance potential of the media they insert into it.
  3. Feature Implementation: Functions such as deduplication, snapshots, and data protection, while beneficial, are also inefficient and strain performance, demanding even more RAM and processing power.
  4. Unnecessary Server Expenses: Often, organizations have servers with empty drive bays. Despite this, they purchase and maintain separate powerful “storage servers,” incurring extra costs.

The High Cost of Data Protection

Exiting VMware to eliminate high storage costs may also allow you to reduce the high cost of protecting VMware. Because of the inefficiencies in the HCI and dedicated storage array software, customers must also invest heavily in backup and recovery architectures, which include the backup software itself, a backup storage target, and a long-term object storage-based system to immutably store backup data so that it is protected from a ransomware attack.

Ironically, all of the investment in backup infrastructure has done little to stem the tide of ransomware. According to a recent VergeIO survey and study:

  1. It takes most customers 3+ weeks to recover from a ransomware attack
  2. It takes most customers 3+ days to realize they are under attack.

If the infrastructure can’t warn you it is under attack and takes days to realize it is happening, then almost every snapshot contains encrypted data, as do most backups. Pulling the correct data out of these backup copies is manual and time-consuming, which is why most recovery efforts take more than three weeks.

VergeIO’s Ultra-Converged Infrastructure: Eliminating High Storage Costs

VergeIO introduced VergeOS, an ultra-converged infrastructure solution to address the high storage costs dilemma. Boasting a unified, efficient code base, VergeOS promises:

Exiting VMware to Eliminate High Storage Costs
  1. Cost Efficiency: Customers can install server-class media like 15.3TB SSDs in their existing servers for a fraction of typical HCI / dedicated array costs while gaining over 300TB of storage capacity.
  2. Enhanced Performance: With these drives, users can potentially achieve over a million IOPS with improved data protection.
  3. Deduplication: Integrated into its core, VergeOS’s global inline deduplication incurs minimal CPU or RAM overhead.
  4. Snapshot Technology: Powered by IOclone technology, VergeIO’s snapshots act more like data clones, making them a viable backup solution. Add to that, IOfortify, and you have infrastructure-wide ransomware protection.
  5. Virtual Data Centers: VergeIO’s unique Virtual Data Center (VDC) technology encapsulates the entire data center and simplifies tasks like patching, disaster recovery, and ransomware resiliency.

The Verdict: Should You Turn Off Your Array?

For those using HCI, the benefits of VergeOS – from superior performance to reduced costs – make the switch compelling. VergeOS installs on the existing HCI hardware, breathing new life into it while improving performance, data protection, and ransomware resiliency. VergeIO features common sense licensing. VergeOS is licensed per physical host, not the number of processors, cores, RAM, or storage capacity. One license per physical server, and it includes all of the capabilities.

Even dedicated storage array customers will find it more cost-effective to change when weighing the high maintenance costs against VergeOS’s offerings. Most AFA customers tell us they can switch to VergeOS for considerably less than the cost of their current maintenance contract. Combine that with the cost savings of exiting VMware; these customers typically report a 50% reduction in TCO. As one customer said, “I’ll save money just by turning my AFA off.”

In conclusion, making informed decisions is crucial as the IT landscape evolves and storage costs skyrocket. Exiting VMware and considering alternatives like VergeOS can extend the savings beyond the VMware license. Many customers find their storage cost savings justify the migration while paving the way for enhanced performance and greater data resiliency.

Exiting VMware to eliminate high storage costs is one of many reasons to consider a VMware alternative, but you need to take a step-by-step approach. Join us for our webinar, “How to Exit VMware Step-by-Step,” for practical advice on how to develop a VMware exit strategy at a pace that makes sense for your organization.

The High Cost of Dedicated Storage

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Because Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) and Software Defined Storage (SDS) have failed to live up to their promises, most IT leaders assume there is nothing they can do about the high cost of dedicated storage. A recent IDC study indicated that over 50% of IT planners ready for a storage refresh consider HCI, but they rule it out the majority of the time. As a result, three-tier architectures continue to be the default architecture for most data centers.

The Problem with Dedicated Storage Architectures

Dedicated storage architectures, either a storage area network (SAN) or a network-attached storage (NAS) system, are expensive to purchase, maintain and refresh. The primary problem is the software that drives the storage products. It is laden with features that are inefficiently implemented. As the product matures, additional features are often “tacked on,” making them even more inefficient.

The High Cost of Dedicated Storage

These inefficiencies mean that vendors must configure the storage hardware that comes with their storage software in such a way that it can mask all of its inefficiencies. This compensation dramatically increases the total solution’s cost significantly as the customer must pay for the additional computing power and memory. These inefficiencies also lead to the inexplicably short life span of storage infrastructure. It forces customers to go through a costly refresh cycle every four to five years and make costly upgrades or deploy additional storage silos as new workloads come online.

Software Defined Storage is Still a Dedicated Storage Architecture

Software Defined Storage (SDS) has the same problem as dedicated storage architectures. The software is often inefficient; you must still buy hardware and dedicate it to storage. Most SDS solutions make you buy new hardware to go with their software. They can not take advantage of your existing hardware investment.

Dedicated Storage Shouldn’t Exist

Beyond compensating for the inefficiencies of dedicated storage hardware and SDS, the reality is that the storage software that drives dedicated arrays and NAS systems, runs on the same server type that you would run a hypervisor or any other application on. That server has built-in networking, and in most cases, it has 24 or more bays for storage media. The same applies to most network hardware. They are servers running a specific application.

Buying multiple servers to do different things when in actuality, one server armed with efficient software could do it all, dramatically increases CAPEX and OPEX. The cost to manage and maintain this stack of at least three different servers is untenable. The result is a complex environment that requires storage, virtualization, and networking specialists, instead of a single IT generalist, which further raises costs. Converging these three separate software stacks is the impetus behind Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI).

Why HCI Didn’t End Dedicated Storage Architectures

2010 when HCI first came to market, it seemed like it was a sign of the end for dedicated storage architectures, but that never materialized. Over a decade after the first HCI solutions appeared, dedicated storage architectures are more prevalent than ever. Industry pundits like Chris Mellor label HCI a “niche market.” How could such an obvious choice for consolidating storage, virtualization, and networking, both hardware and software, not take over the market?

The first problem with HCI solutions is they didn’t converge anything. Yes, the storage and virtualization software, and in rare cases, the network software, run on the same server hardware. However, each software package has an entirely different code base and does not know that the other packages exist. There are no gains in management efficiencies as a result.

Each of the three (at least) code bases within HCI is also very inefficient because it was initially designed to run on dedicated hardware, not share hardware resources with other modules. Finally, in most cases, the storage and network software run as virtual machines within the hypervisor construct.

These realities result in HCI being deemed a good solution for medium-sized businesses. Still, as these infrastructures scale to address the demand of larger businesses and enterprises, inefficiency is stacked on top of inefficiency, making effective utilization of the available resources a significant problem. None of the HCI vendors went to work on the core HCI challenges:

  1. Storage and network operations must be equal citizens with virtualization, not run as VMs.
  2. An HCI cluster’s east-west traffic (node-to-node communications) is significant and must be specifically optimized.
  3. Optimizing operational efficiency and simplifying administration requires a unified code base, not three code bases from three different vendors that are glued together by a management interface.
The High Cost of Dedicated Storage

There is also an economic problem with HCI infrastructures. In theory, running the entire infrastructure stack on one tier instead of three tiers should be less expensive. However, HCI is almost always the same price as or more expensive than the three-tiered architectures it attempts to replace. These HCI designs require even more powerful servers with even more memory and there are still three separate licenses (storage, virtualization, and networking) that must be paid for and bundled into the solution. The final straw is that most HCI solutions require you to purchase new hardware, and often, conveniently, from the HCI vendor, further increasing the price.

The result is that HCI has no operational savings or economic advantages over the traditional three-tier model.

Ultraconverged Infrastructure Eliminates the High Cost of Dedicated Storage

VergeIO’s Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) eliminates the high cost of dedicated storage by overcoming the shortcomings of SDS and HCI. VergeOS is written from scratch to combine virtualization, storage services, and layer 2 and layer 3 network functionality into a single unified code base. With VergeOS, storage, and networking are equal citizens to the hypervisor, not servants. The result is a solution that is a fraction of the code size as other solutions but provides superior features. VergeOS is typically 50% less expensive than the equivalent VMware licenses which usually include all the functionality of its add-on packages like vSAN, NSX, and vCloud Director.

VergeOS can run on just about any server hardware built within the last six years, and it will deliver better performance and longevity from that existing hardware. This hardware flexibility enables you to leverage your existing servers and enjoy additional cost savings instead of being forced into buying new servers and spending more money.

Regarding storage, VergeOS uses drives installed in the same servers running the virtualization and networking functions. Our efficiency ensures that all three functions run at top performance and do not require additional processing power or memory. The VergeOS license is not capacity based; it is priced per node so that IT can put as much capacity as possible in each node. Adding drives to an existing server instead of buying a dedicated storage system is an order of magnitude less expensive.

Global Inline Deduplication is built into the very core of VergeOS and has been from day one. It was not an afterthought added years later. The result is deduplication has no impact on performance. Since deduplication is integrated into the core of VergeOS, it drives many of our advanced features like IOclone, our answer to snapshots, IOprotect for disaster recovery, and IOfortify, our solution for rapid ransomware recovery. Again, all of these features are built into the core of the VergeOS software, not add-on modules.

Many potential customers are reaching out to us as a no-compromise alternative to VMware. Still, the compelling capabilities of VergeOS mean many others reach out to us as part of a NAS or SAN refresh project because the savings we can provide over the high cost of dedicated storage are even more significant than the savings we can provide versus VMware alone. Then add the operational savings of a truly converged infrastructure, and you’ll see why we have incredibly high customer satisfaction.

Snapshots or Clones for Data Protection?

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snapshots or clones for data protection

Most storage solutions will provide IT professionals with either snapshots or clones for data protection, but are the differences between the two functions significant enough to make it part of your selection criteria? Like all things in IT, the answer depends.  In this case, it depends on if and how your vendor implemented the two technologies. 

Register now to join us live on May 4th for technical deep dive into virtual infrastructure file systems and see a live demonstration of IOprotect.

What Are Snapshots?

Deciding if snapshots or clones are best for data protection first requires understanding how the two technologies work. First, let’s look at snapshots. Most storage solutions, be they a filesystem or block storage, have a metadata layer that points to where each data segment resides. A snapshot makes a copy of those pointers at a specific time and then sets those blocks pointing to a read-only mode until it expires. 

Snapshot Update Methods

There are two methods for updating a read-only segment because of a snapshot.  The first method is a copy-on-write process. When a user or application attempts to update or change an existing segment, the storage solution copies the old segment to a new location and allows the new data to occupy the original segment. The storage solution then updates the snapshot metadata with the old segment’s new location. 

The second snapshot update method is “redirect on write”. Using this method, the storage system will write the modified data to a new location and update the metadata of the “production view” of the data. It does not need to update the “snapshot view” of the data. 

Both of these methods limit the scalability of snapshots because multiple writes and multiple changes to metadata need to occur. Also, many storage systems use separate metadata trees to manage each snapshot. As the number of snapshots increases and the depth of those snapshots (snapshots of snapshots), the complexity of managing and updating the metadata wears on system performance.  As a result, where the snapshot is occurring within the hypervisor, on the same hardware as the hypervisor (software-defined storage running as a virtual machine), or on dedicated storage hardware, there are limits to how many snapshots the storage solution can maintain. 

The complexity shows itself by degrading overall system performance. Storage systems with legacy snapshot technology require:

  • Limitations to number of copies retained
  • High-end processors in the storage servers
  • Dedicated data processing units (DPUs)
  • Days to remove old snapshots

What Are Clones?

Clones are copies of existing segments. They are more standalone, and updating a clone does not require the same metadata overhead as snapshots. The independence of a clone means that they don’t suffer from performance degradation as snapshots regardless of how many there are or how long they are retained. Clones don’t need either of the sophisticated update methods that snapshots require.

The Downside to Clones

The typical downside to clones is that they are either complete copies of the original volume or deduplicated copies. A full copy, means that data must traverse the internals of the storage infrastructure, travel across the network to the hypervisor, and back down the network again to the storage system. 

Some hypervisors have initiated capabilities to eliminate traversing the network, saving time. Still, most cloning functions must process data through the internals of the storage solution twice, even if that solution has a deduplication feature. With deduplication, the resulting clone may not consume any additional capacity, but the time to create that copy is still significant, especially if the volume is of any measurable size. It is best not to use the applications while the storage solution clones it. As a result, most organizations don’t use cloning as part of their data protection strategy. 

IOclone — The Best of Clones and Snapshots

As we’ve discussed, clones and snapshots typically have some overhead in the capacity they consume and the processing required to use them. Clones typically have to make a copy of all of the metadata information, which means the cloning process takes some time upfront, but then they are ready to use and independent. Snapshots don’t have the upfront processing time and, as a result, are ready for use almost instantly. However, they show performance degradation as the number of snapshots increases when used or during snapshot clean-up routines. 

IOclone is a capability of the VergeOS operating system that combines the best of clones and snapshots into a single solution. Since global inline deduplication is part of the metadata in VergeOS, IOclone, copies are similar to snapshots. Regardless of capacity, it can create clones of VMs, volumes, or entire virtual data centers in milliseconds. At the same time, IOclone-created copies have the stand-alone performance of independent clones without initially consuming additional capacity footprint.

With IOclone, IT doesn’t have to choose between snapshots or clones for data protection. This capability within VergeOS can retain hundreds, even thousands of copies of VMs, volumes, or entire Virtual Data Centers (VDC) without negatively impacting performance or capacity consumption.

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snapshots or clones for data protection

Conclusion

IOclone is also part of our IOprotect solution, which enables you to start a VMware Exit by first using VergeOS as a disaster recovery solution. Most customers find IOprotect reduces the cost of disaster recovery by more than 50% without adding additional hardware. It provides a complete recovery environment, converging disaster recovery so that data, applications, and the processing power to recover are all available from a small cluster of nodes. 

As your confidence in VergeOS grows, you can use it for your production environment. The tightly integrated VergeOS architecture delivers more efficient performance, increasing workload density on less physical hardware. Once your conversion is complete, you’ll lower costs by as much as 80% and enjoy an actively developed data center operating system with unparalleled support.

snapshots or clones for data protection

The Total Cost of Replacing a SAN

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Storage vendors force you to replace your storage system every four to five years, so understanding the total cost of SAN replacement is critical for IT professionals to learn. After all, replacing a SAN (storage area network) or NAS (network attached storage) has more expenses than just buying the new hardware.  

There are many reasons for replacing a SAN or a NAS. At the top of the list are artificial end-of-life, inability to meet new performance or capacity demands, lack of flexibility to support new hardware innovations, and inadequate protection from new, modern threats like ransomware. The result is a never-ending storage refresh merry-go-round. 

There are five components to understanding the total cost of replacing a SAN:

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1. The Cost of SAN Identification 

The first element of the total cost of replacing a SAN is identifying a set of potential storage replacement candidates. The IT team has to play the role of storage industry analyst to find the right storage system to meet their current and future needs. When done correctly, this process can take weeks; when done hastily, this process can lead to the purchase of a storage system that doesn’t quite meet the current requirements or is more expensive than necessary. Since most IT staffs are shorthanded and stretched too thin, the chances of not selecting the right SAN or NAS replacement candidates are high. 

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2. The Cost of SAN Proof of Concepts 

After making a short list of potential replacement storage systems, IT must evaluate and test each manufacturer’s claims. Creating a test environment that can simulate a real-world workload has always been challenging; now, supply chain issues and staff shortages make testing almost impossible. Most vendors can’t just send you software and let you install their storage solution on available hardware. Instead, they must ship you pre-configured hardware and be heavily involved in your evaluation’s proof of concept phase. It can take months just to get the storage system so you can test it. You also have to ask yourself, “if I can’t install it myself, how hard will it be to support and operate it after they leave?”

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3. The System Cost

While all vendors claim an impressive return on investment (ROI), they will not give you the system for free. You need to pay for it and hope it lasts long enough that your organization will realize the ROI. There are two keys to being able to realize a solid ROI. First, the upfront cost must be low enough that the organization can afford the system. Second, the operational costs can’t be too burdensome, and third, the system has to stay in operation long enough for the ROI to be realized.

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4. The Cost of SAN Migration 

Once the new storage system is selected and IT completes its evaluation, it must migrate data to the new system. The larger the environment, the more challenging the migration process becomes. In most cases, IT must identify and purchase special software tools to help with the migration. The average time to migrate from an old storage system to a new one is more than 90 days. In most cases, it is more than six months. Both the old and the new storage systems must stay active during this time (which doubles power and cooling costs), increasing backup complexity and is a cause of many operational errors. By the time the migration is complete, IT is only three years away from having to start the process all over again.

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5. The Cost of Learning a New System

Once data is migrated to the new storage system. IT administrators must learn the new system’s software. There will be new methods to create volumes, configure drive redundancy, take and retain snapshots, and implement replication. There are often some features missing on the new system, causing IT to create new workarounds. 

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The Problem with “Stretching” The Current System 

To avoid the storage refresh ordeal, many organizations will try to stretch the serviceable life of their current storage system. If the system continues to meet performance or capacity demands, this stretch typically involves buying extra out-of-warranty maintenance from the manufacturer or a third party. These out-of-warranty contracts are costly and more challenging to support.

There is also a stretching cost of lost capabilities because the storage system can’t provide improved performance or increased capacity as soon as users or applications need it. Lack of performance or capacity has a ripple effect on the networking and compute tiers, which increases the cost of those infrastructures. At some point, stretching the storage system leads to a break in data access or response time, leading to scrambling through the storage refresh process.

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Storage Silos and Three-Tier Architectures Amplify the Costs 

One of the biggest challenges with storage replacement is the fragmentation within the data center. The data center is islands of separate workloads. Each of these islands typically has its own computing infrastructure, sometimes its own network infrastructure, and almost certainly its own storage system. While a storage system typically requires refresh or replacement every four to five years, the separate storage islands mean that most organizations have six or seven different storage systems. As a result, IT is almost continuously replacing storage systems and managing data migration processes.

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How to Get off the Storage Refresh Merry-Go-Round 

Getting off the merry-go-round requires consolidating infrastructure so that IT has only one entity to manage instead of six or seven. It means a storage infrastructure that’s flexible enough to meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs and support both legacy and future storage hardware. The new solution can’t compromise on features. It has to provide a robust set of data services that enable organizations to protect their data assets and assure their availability. 

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VergeIO’s VergeOS eliminates complicated data center processes like storage refreshes. We simplify IT and end storage refreshes by creating an ultraconverged infrastructure that collapses the data center tiers (compute, network, storage) into a unified, cohesive operating environment.

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