Coraid EtherCloud for Software-Defined Storage

Coraid Inc., developer of Ethernet-based storage solutions with more than 1,500 customers, unveiled its EtherCloud platform for software-defined storage.

Built on technology from Coraid’s acquisition of Yunteq in late 2011,
EtherCloud delivers business agility to architects of the data centre by
simplifying delivery of scale-out infrastructure. It leverages a policy
engine and REST APIs to connect data centre infrastructure to
applications, enabling programmability and one-click provisioning of
enterprise storage.
 
Traditional storage management in highly dynamic cloud environments is
complex, resource-intensive and error-prone at scale. Storage
administrators are burdened with translating application requirements
into storage configurations, which they then have to set up manually.
Frequent changes to the environment necessitate constant monitoring and
reconfiguration to ensure conformance to SLAs. Software-defined storage
allows storage designers and operators to control how storage is
deployed, provisioned, and managed through software, enabling
automation, templates, self-service models, and a broader range of cloud
computing services.
 
The explosion of data, estimated by analysts at 50% annual CAGR, is
testing the limits on the economics and scalability of deploying and
managing traditional ‘big iron’ storage. EtherDrive storage brings
simplicity, price-performance and just-in-time scalability to storage
infrastructure. EtherCloud complements the capabilities of EtherDrive
storage with a REST-based interface and policy-based automation to
ensure flexibility and programmability at multi-petabyte scale.
 
"EtherCloud breaks through the complexity of legacy storage
management, replacing it with a flexible, automated, programmable
platform. This allows enterprise and cloud customers to provision and
manage petabytes of high-performance block and file storage, with the
same simplicity found in consumer cloud services," said Anil Virmani, SVP of engineering at Coraid. "We
are excited to enable the next generation of software defined data
centres and drive complexity out of the most challenging layer of the
data centre today – storage."
 
EtherCloud Platform
It introduces a policy engine and automation framework that enables
one-click provisioning of sophisticated enterprise storage
configurations, simplifying capacity and performance management. This
allows IT administrators and end users to reduce
infrastructure-provisioning times from weeks to minutes. Using a set of
REST APIs that expose every aspect of storage provisioning and
operational management, administrators can automate complex workflows
and integrate storage management into IT operations.
 
Key features of EtherCloud include:

• Ability to create pools of storage that can be automatically created and grown on demand
• One-click instantiation of VMware ESXi VMs, integrated with storage allocation and networking connectivity
• Multitenancy and integration with LDAP/AD for authentication
• Metering of compute, network and storage use
• Designed for integration with open networking and cloud frameworks, as well as with a variety of industry-standard file systems

"Modern data centres are increasingly turning to commodity hardware
that is rapidly provisioned into customised services through software.
This programmable building block approach to infrastructure offers far
greater flexibility and agility," said Clive Longbottom, founder and analyst at Quocirca. "Server
virtualisation and now software-defined networking have transformed the
top half of the data centre. A storage vendor that can take the lead in
building a credible software-defined storage solution on a scale-out
storage platform will have a significant early mover advantage."
 
"We are aggressively investing in the next-generation data centre
built on software-defined infrastructure to better serve our customers
at scale," said Tim Dufour, CEO of RackForce NetWorks, Inc., cloud service provider in Canada. "As
an early access customer of EtherCloud, we are excited by its potential
to automate our storage environment. This directly translates to lower
management overhead, more efficient operations, and better economics."
 
EtherCloud will be available in Q3 2012.