Ism Module 8: Software Defined Storage

Front 1

What are the drivers for Software-Defined Storage? (4 reasons)

Back 1

1. Creation of complex IT silos in data centers

2. Critical functionality and management tied to storage system

3. Difficult to allocate storage to satisfy the capacity requirements of applications in real time.

4. Traditional environments are not architected for third platform technologies

Front 2

What is Software-Defined Storage?

Back 2

Storage infrastructure that is managed and automated bysoftware. SDS abstracts heterogeneous storage systems and their underlying capabilities, andpools the storage resources.

Front 3

What are the key attributes of SDS?

Back 3

1. Storage abstraction and pooling

2. Automated, policy-driven storage provisioning

3. Unified management

4. Self-service

5. Open and extensible

Front 4

What is storage abstraction and pooling?

Back 4

SDS abstracts and pools storage resources acrossheterogeneous storage infrastructure. SDS software creates a single large storage pool withthe underlying storage resources, from which several virtual storage pools are created.

Front 5

What is Automated, policy-driven storage provisioning

Back 5

In the SDS model, storageservices are dynamically composed from available resources.

Front 6

What is Unified management?

Back 6

Unified management provides a single control pointfor the entire infrastructure across all physical and virtual resources.

Front 7

What is self-service?

Back 7

Users select storage services from a self-service catalog and self provision them.

Front 8

What is open and extensible?

Back 8

An SDS environment is open and easy to extend enabling newcapabilities to be added. An extensible architecture enables integrating multi-vendor storage,and external management interfaces and applications into the SDS environment through theuse of application programming interfaces (APIs).

Front 9

What is SDS controller?

Back 9

The SDS controlleris software that manages, abstracts, pools, and automates the physical storage systems intopolicy-based virtual storage pools.

Front 10

What is HDFS?

Back 10

Hadoop Distributed File System

Front 11

What is REST API?

Back 11

The core interface to the SDS controller

Front 12

What is a compute-based SAN?

Back 12

A software-defined virtual SAN created from the direct-attached storage located locally on the compute systems in a cluster.

Front 13

What is a compute-based control component and what is its function?

Back 13

metadata manager, serves as themonitoring and configuration agent. It holds cluster-wide mapping information and monitorscapacity, performance, and load balancing

Front 14

What are the benefits of SDS? (5 reasons)

Back 14

1. Simplified storage environment

2. Operational Efficiency

3. Agility

4. Reusing existing infrastructure

5. Cloud support

Front 15

What are the key functions of the Control Plane? (4 functions)

Back 15

1. Asset discovery

2. Resource abstraction and pooling

3. Provisioning resources for services

4. Providing support for data protection.

Front 16

What is Asset discovery?

Back 16

Automatically detects an asset when it is added to the SDS environment. Thecontroller uses the asset’s credentials to connect to it over the network, and either obtains orconfirms its configuration information.

E.g. Storage networks, compute systems and clusters, and data protection solutions.

Front 17

What is Physical Storage Abstraction?

Back 17

Abstracts storage across the physical storage systems and managesindividual components. This allows administrators and users to treat storage as a large resource.It enables focusing just on the amount of storage needed, and the performance and protectioncharacteristics required.

Front 18

What is Virtual Storage System?

Back 18

A virtual storage system is an abstraction of physical storage systems, and the networkconnectivity between compute systems and the storage systems. A virtual storage system, alsocalled as a “virtual array”, provides a more abstract view of the storage environment forprovisioning and applying policy.

Front 19

What are Virtual Storage Pools?

Back 19

A virtual storage pool is an abstraction that represents a standardizedstorage service offering out of which storage may be provisioned. There are three main types ofvirtual storage pools: block, file, and object.

Front 20

What is a Virtual Data Center?

Back 20

A virtual data center is a collection of storage infrastructure that canbe managed as a cohesive unit by data center administrators. The virtual data center enablesan administrator to discover physical storage and abstract it into virtual storage systems andvirtual storage pools.

Front 21

What is Multi-tenant Configuration?

Back 21

Each tenant isa group of multiple users. Each tenant can be configured with an authentication system, andusers with specific assigned roles can be mapped into tenants.

E.g. Certain virtual storage systems and/or virtualpools might only be accessible to specific tenants

Front 22

What is a Service catalog in regards to resource provisioning?

Back 22

The servicecatalog provides the tenant users with access to the set of predefined storage services.

Front 23

What are some examples of block data service in regards to resource provisioning?

Back 23

1. Create a block volume

2. Delete a block volume

3. Bind a block volume to compute

4. Unbind block volume from compute

5. Mount a block volume

6. Unmount a block volume

7. Expand block volume

Front 24

What is File Data Service?

Back 24

Enables users to create NFS and CIFS file shares and export them tocompute systems.

E.g. 1. Create a file share (NFS/CIFS)

2. Expand a file share

3. Delete a file share (NFS/CIFS)

Front 25

What is Object Data Service?

Back 25

The object data service enables data to be stored, accessed, and manipulated as objects onobject-based, file-based, and commodity storage platforms managed by an SDS controller.

Front 26

What is a namespace?

Back 26

Connects the object data service to an object virtual pool. There may be a singlenamespace or an administrator may create a namespace for each tenant.

Front 27

What is Data Protection Support?

Back 27

Ensures data availability and protection against data corruption,hardware failures, and data center disasters.

E.g. Block protection, snapshots, and continuos data protection

Front 28

What is Application Programming Interface (API)?

Back 28

A set of programmatic instructions andspecifications that provides an interface for software components to communicate with eachother. It specifies a set of routines (operations), input parameters, outputs/responses, datatypes, and errors. The routines can be called from a software component allowing it to interactwith the software providing the API.

Front 29

Why do we need APIs in SDDC?

Back 29

They enable orchestration and provisioning resources from pools.

Front 30

What do we need SDS in API?

Back 30

The REST API provides the interface to all underlying resources.

Front 31

What is REST?

Back 31

A client-server software architecture style.

Provides an easy means to consume services, and combine multiple web resources into applications.

Front 32

What are the basic design principles of REST? (4)

Back 32

1. Resource identification using URI

2. Use of standard HTTP methods

3. Self-descriptive resource representations

4. Stateless design

Front 33

What are 3 EMC products that relate to this module?

Back 33

1. ViPR Controller

2. ECS

3. ScaleIO