Enterprise Strategy Group: Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon

White Paper Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon

By Terri McClure, Senior Analyst

January 2013

This ESG White Paper was commissioned by EMC Isilon and is distributed under license from ESG. © 2013 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

White Paper: Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon 2

© 2013 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Contents

Why You Need to Focus on Files Now .......................................................................................................... 3 Warning: Your File Data has Left the Building .......................................................................................................... 3 The Imperative to Take Action ................................................................................................................................. 4

File Server Consolidation in a Mobile World ................................................................................................ 4

Public, Hybrid, and Private Cloud Models for Online File Sharing ............................................................... 5

Comparing Public, Hybrid, and Private Clouds for Online File Sharing ........................................................ 6 Public Cloud File Sharing .......................................................................................................................................... 6 Hybrid Cloud ............................................................................................................................................................. 7 Private Cloud ............................................................................................................................................................ 7 Storage System Considerations for Private Cloud File Sharing ................................................................................ 8

How EMC Isilon Meets the OFS Challenge ................................................................................................... 9

The Bigger Truth ......................................................................................................................................... 11 All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at 508.482.0188.



Why You Need to Focus on Files Now

File data has been the neglected afterthought of the IT organization. IT managers typically spend their time dealing with business applications and associated data—data which is typically stored on internal disks, DAS or SAN. That is because these business applications keep the lights on, making sure the bills get paid, orders get shipped, and invoices are tracked, while file data is typically associated with individuals or line of business applications. IT is often involved in some level of decision making and support when it comes to how that data will be stored and managed, but often times, responsibility for file sharing and support is decentralized.

That’s why, until recently, primary storage for file data today can be found in three places;

In the data center, either on specialty NAS systems, or Windows or Linux servers

Scattered across departmental specialty NAS systems, or Windows or Linux servers

On employees’ PCs and laptops

But with the influx of consumer devices such as tablets and smartphones into the enterprise, IT needs to pay much more attention to file data. These devices are why there is now a fourth place that files can be found: in consumer file sharing services.

Warning: Your File Data has Left the Building

Users are storing business files in personal file sharing accounts in order to access them from multiple mobile devices, such as their tablets and smartphones as well as their business devices such as PCs, Macs, or laptops. In fact, ESG recently conducted research into IT’s perception of just how widespread the problem, often called rogue application use or shadow IT, is, and we found it to be very widespread. A whopping 70% of the IT managers surveyed by ESG know or believe that users have business data in their own personal file sharing accounts (see Figure 1).1

Figure 1. Use of Non-Corporate Approved Online File Sharing Solutions

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2013.

1 Source: ESG Research Report, Corporate Online File Sharing and Collaboration Market Trends, November 2012. All other ESG research charts

and references in this white paper are taken from this research report, unless otherwise noted.

Yes, I know that end-users are using their

own individual accounts that are not endorsed by IT, 36%

Perhaps, I suspect that end-users are

using their own individual accounts

that are not endorsed by IT, but can't be

sure, 34%

No, I do not believe that end-users are

using their own individual accounts

that are not endorsed by IT, 28%

Don't know, 1%

Regardless of whether or not your company has a corporate account, do you know if end-users in your organization are using non-IT approved Online File Sharing and Collaboration

solutions? (Percent of respondents, N=499)

http://www.esg-global.com/research-reports/corporate-online-file-sharing-and-collaboration-market-trends/



IT managers have been trying to keep data under control by discouraging or even setting formal policies against use of personal file sharing accounts for business data—but more than a third, or 36%, of the companies with formal policies against use of personal accounts report that they know employees are using personal accounts, and 21% of those with policies in place suspect rogue usage. The news is worse for companies that don’t have formal polices and just discourage use of personal accounts: Thirty five percent know about and 51% suspect rogue usage. Mind you, these numbers are likely low, since some IT managers are probably reticent to admit even in a blind survey that they know or suspect that employees are using personal accounts despite policies and discouragement.

The Imperative to Take Action

The danger of these personal accounts is the threat of data leakage, opening the network to external threats, and the lack of IT control and visibility into the sharing environment. When an employee stores data in a personal file sharing account, IT has no visibility into what data is stored there and what devices it may be shared on. And there is no audit trail of who else has access to the data. But perhaps most disturbing is the fact that if the employee leaves the company, the data in the online file sharing account more or less “leaves” with that person. It is in their personal account in a cloud service, and probably synced to their laptop, desktop, or cached on a tablet. IT has no visibility as to what data left with the employee.

Granted, the threat of data loss has always been a challenge for IT, but it has always been a conscious decision by an employee to take data, either by copying it onto a USB stick or a CD. With personal file sharing accounts, the threat is heightened: Data leakage becomes the default behavior—it just happens. And since the data could be on multiple devices that are accessed by multiple people, there is no accountability whatsoever.

At this point, it is not a question of whether there will be a major data loss event associated with the use of personal file sharing accounts, it is a matter of when. That is why IT needs to act sooner rather than later to build a file sharing environment that supports the mobility requirements of the modern enterprise without compromising corporate security by opening the network to outside threats. End-users are doing it without IT—it is time for IT to change the equation and get back in control of corporate data.

File Server Consolidation in a Mobile World

Because of the decentralized nature of file data, there are big challenges associated with gaining control of the file sharing environment. A common byproduct of both the cloud and consumerization movements is a democratization of the decision making process around technology use. IT can no longer dictate what technology is used across the enterprise, and employees and departments can quickly find alternatives to the solutions provided by corporate IT. In a decentralized file sharing environment, the challenge is magnified: Departments have already had some level of autonomy in decision making. That is why it is important for IT to take a well-planned approach to solving the mobile file sharing challenge, including steps to:

Team with the business unit to evaluate solutions that meet individual needs. With the broad availability and easy-to-deploy nature of alternative file sharing services, the old command and control approach is just not going to work. The business unit knows what functionality is required—how much project management and workflow functionality may be required, how strict the controls and auditability of the sharing environments needs to be.

Pay lots of attention to end-user ease of use... There are almost no barriers or switching costs for the employees to use or keep using alternative file sharing solutions. As important as administrative functionality and controls are, end-user ease of use is just as, if not more, important. If the solution you provide is not as easy to use as the consumer solutions, you will have challenges with adoption.

…and training. Many business-focused services have richer functionality and are much better suited for collaborative environments than consumer solutions, but the very nature of the richer functionality makes them a little more complex to use. Many solutions now do a nice job of balancing functionality and ease of use, but they are still not “Dropbox simple” and that is what consumers are used to. Once end-users are trained on the new and richer functionality and understand the productivity benefits, they often see the



light and embrace it. ESG has heard time and again as users train on business solutions “at first I didn’t like it because it wasn’t as easy and intuitive as Dropbox, but once I used it and realized how much more I could do, I loved it.”

Leverage the viral effect. That is how the consumer solutions got into your enterprise, and that is how you will get them out. Once users are on board, trained, and productive, make sure everyone knows it. Publish best practices and productivity success stories. Make sure everyone knows the benefits of using the advanced features you just introduced that are lacking in their personal consumer solutions—for example, how much easier life can be when working on projects and managing files using the full text search, embedded comment threads, shared version tracking, and file locking features you have in the new solution.

Understand that one solution may not meet all needs. Some teams have a need for tracking IP while others may need to lock down documents in deal rooms, and other teams may just have requirements for basic sharing of files across multiple devices. There is no one-size-fits-all solution—often, the greater the security functionality, the greater the cost and the administrative burden (for both IT and the end-user). That complexity could easily turn off those end-users that just need basic file sharing across devices and drive them back toward using personal accounts. The most cost-effective and stickiest way to meet the mobile file sharing dilemma is to build a service catalog that has tiers of solutions—some simple and basic, some complex yet very secure.

If building a private cloud, ensure your storage infrastructure can be quickly and easily scaled. The online file sharing area is one place where IT needs to be especially cautious about injecting any friction into the business process. If it takes too long to add capacity or if it is too painful to add collaborators or clients, it is much too easy for a group or department to go to a service provider. Additionally, with centralization of departmental file servers and consolidation of capacity that used to be on desktop and laptop hard drives, capacity planning and growth will be less predictable and likely faster than IT teams have experienced in the past. Therefore, the infrastructure you build on is critical to your success.

Public, Hybrid, and Private Cloud Models for Online File Sharing

Public and hybrid cloud solutions for online file sharing are similar in many ways, while pure, private file sharing cloud deployments have significantly different requirements (see Table 1). The differences between public, private, and hybrid are simply where pieces of the infrastructure, such as the servers and storage capacity, are housed, and who owns and controls those pieces. In a public cloud scenario, all equipment is owned and controlled by the service provider. In a hybrid cloud scenario, the customer organization keeps some pieces on-premises. For example, an organization may keep its encryption keys on a local server, separate from the encrypted files stored in the cloud. And in a private scenario, the equipment is owned and controlled by the client, while the application may be owned and controlled by the service provider or the client.



Table 1. Public, Hybrid, and Private Cloud for Online File Sharing Comparison

Characteristics Public Cloud Hybrid Cloud Private Cloud

Application hosting Hosted by service provider

Hosted by service provider

On-premises

Application control Controlled by service provider *

Controlled by service provider *

May be controlled by the client or a service provider*

Equipment ownership Service provider owns, runs, and maintains all equipment

Client owns, runs, and maintains some equipment; service provider owns, runs, and maintains some equipment

Client owns, runs, and maintains all equipment

Typical licensing plan Client licenses software on a per-seat, subscription basis

Client licenses software on a per-seat, subscription basis

Multiple models available

* Client may control some limited configuration settings and controls user administration functions


Comparing Public, Hybrid, and Private Clouds for Online File Sharing

When evaluating a full public cloud implementation, a private cloud, or a hybrid cloud implementation, IT professionals should consider the following advantages and disadvantages of each approach. There are tradeoffs in performance, administration, and equipment overhead with each approach, as well as security considerations.

Public Cloud File Sharing

In a public cloud deployment, the service provider is responsible for all equipment procurement, maintenance, and administration, as well as application administration and data protection. The client (or enterprise) is responsible for user and account administration.

Advantages of public cloud file sharing:

Service provider absorbs almost all associated costs (i.e., real estate, staffing, hardware maintenance, software patching, etc.); service provider’s fees take advantage of economies of scale

Service provider is responsible for data availability, file backup and disaster recovery

Configuration and implementation are relatively simple

Disadvantages of public cloud file sharing:

Customer organization is dependent on service provider for file security

Performance may be degraded as users wait for files to upload or download

File sizes may be limited by the cloud service provider’s terms

Customer organization is dependent on service provider for rapid response to unanticipated outages

There can be significant costs savings achieved on both the capex and opex fronts leveraging the economies of scale that an online file sharing service can provide. The tradeoff is a lack of control over the infrastructure. Customer organizations are entirely dependent on the service provider when it comes to maintaining data availability or responding quickly to unplanned outages. Customer organizations should asses the service provider’s data availability, business continuity and disaster recovery practices to ensure their needs will be met.



Hybrid Cloud

In a hybrid deployment, the service provider is responsible for some equipment procurement, while the client also procures in-house components. Both share some management burden for the equipment (though the service provider typically absorbs the brunt of the work). Application maintenance and administration falls to the service provider, while user and account administration falls to the enterprise.

Advantages of hybrid cloud file sharing:

Latency problems may be mitigated with local cache

With sufficient local capacity, enterprise is typically not limited in file sizes

Enterprise may maintain key security controls locally

Enterprises may control what data can go to the cloud and what data stays behind the firewall

Customer organization may rely on service provider for file-based back-up and disaster recovery relating to the set of files stored in the cloud

Disadvantages of hybrid cloud file sharing:

Customer organization absorbs a portion of the associated costs

Configuration and implementation is more complex to deploy and maintain

Synchronization and data integrity problems may arise as applications access files from both locations

The added complexity of a hybrid cloud solution should not be underestimated, but can be eased somewhat by cloud storage service providers who integrate tools (such as Active Directory to replicate permissions) and provide a common control plane for setting policies across the on-premises and in-cloud environments.

Private Cloud

In a private cloud, the enterprise is responsible for most if not all equipment procurement, operation, and maintenance. The application may be delivered as a service in which the service provider has some compute cycles in the cloud that run the application (commonly referred to as the control plane) in the cloud, while all data remains in-house. In this case, the software is often licensed under a subscription model by seats, and the service provider maintains and administers the application while the enterprise handles user and account administration. The alternative model is one in which the software is licensed on an annual basis in an enterprise software model, and deployed in the data center. In this case, the enterprise handles all software maintenance and administration as well as user administration.

Advantages of private cloud file sharing:

Local file sharing eliminates latency concerns associated with leveraging public cloud

Enterprise is typically not limited in file sizes

Enterprise maintains key security controls locally, can integrate with in-house security processes (i.e., key management, etc.)

Data stays behind the firewall

Enterprise controls and is accountable for data protection policies and procedures

Disadvantages of private cloud file sharing:

Customer organization absorbs all the associated costs

Configuration and implementation is more complex to deploy and maintain



There is one more caveat when deploying a private file sharing cloud. The underlying storage infrastructure plays a starring role—it has a direct impact on the user experience, and therefore it must be carefully planned out.

Storage System Considerations for Private Cloud File Sharing

According to ESG research, the growth and management of unstructured data is already the biggest storage challenge facing IT today (see Figure 2).2 Bringing all the file data associated with departmental servers and online file sharing into the data center will certainly magnify the problem. Of course, file server consolidation can help reduce costs by simply reducing the number of file sharing systems (Windows and Linux file servers as well as specialty NAS systems) deployed in general and getting better utilization—but if you are bringing all this endpoint data into the data center, it is important that the backend storage platform is the right one for the job or the effort to get back control over your file data could backfire.

Figure 2. Top Ten Biggest Storage Challenges


One of the biggest challenges with the overall storage environment in recent years has been the time it takes to respond to requests to provision users or capacity. With the ubiquity of online file sharing solutions, departments are not going to wait for IT to provision more storage to launch a new project or bring new collaborators into an existing project. They will just go subscribe to a service. So having a fast time to provision is a key factor in choosing a storage system.

The next issue is availability. PC and laptop users in a sync and share environment may not notice an outage, because most solutions sync all the data on the local device and private cloud. But more and more end-users are accessing data from mobile devices (i.e., smartphones and tablets) especially your executive staff. OFS solutions do not sync all the files on these devices because there just isn’t enough capacity on the mobile devices to do that;

2 Source: ESG Research Report, 2012 Storage Market Survey, November 2012.

17%

19%

19%

20%

25%

25%

25%

39%

39%

40%

5%

6%

5%

5%

4%

5%

7%

10%

11%

15%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Discovery, analysis and reporting of storage usage

Lack of skilled staff resources

Management, optimization & automation of dataplacement

Staff costs

Data migration

Need to support growing virtual server environments

Running out of physical space

Hardware costs

Data protection (e.g., backup/recovery, etc.)

Rapid growth and management of unstructured data

In general, what would you say are your organization’s biggest challenges in terms of its storage environment? Which would you characterize as the primary storage challenge

for your organization? (Percent of respondents, N=418)

Primarystoragechallenge

All storagechallenges

http://www.esg-global.com/research-reports/2012-storage-market-survey/



these devices depend on the data being available 24 x 7, therefore the storage system must be available 24 x 7 x 365, even during upgrades, lease rollovers, or site outages. Remember: These are all the files related to user home directories and group projects, so if employees can’t get to them, they can’t work.

These first two points address those parts of the storage experience that affect the end-users, and since end-users can switch so easily, they are the top two criteria. But peripherally related to the user experience are performance and capacity. Of course when sharing files over the internet, performance will vary based on connectivity. But IT needs to be very aware that the constant syncing of files with desktop and laptop clients and the increased frequency of access from mobile devices will put greater demand on the file storage infrastructure. That creates three areas where special attention needs to be paid to the storage infrastructure—first, it must scale throughput with capacity (scale-out) so that bandwidth does not create a bottleneck. Second, it must load balance and tune itself in an automated manner because storage administrators can’t be in reactive performance tuning and load balancing mode as that would take too many administrative cycles to keep up. And third, it must scale to support the higher capacity demands associated with a file server consolidation effort combined with the consolidation of endpoint device capacity. Additionally—and policies will vary largely by company—many companies are allowing employees to partition off a part of the online file sharing service for personal data in order to encourage adoption of the business-sanctioned file sharing solution. That means providing capacity for personal photo and multimedia files. The trade-off of managing extra capacity for getting corporate data back in-house is worth it to many organizations.

Then we have the considerations that do not directly impact the end-user experience, but will significantly impact IT. Having a system that scales performance with capacity, scales to massive capacity, and provides automated tuning and load balancing will reduce the footprint (by requiring fewer systems), help increase utilization (by consolidating on a single shared resource and eliminating storage stovepipes) and reduce the administrative burden (by requiring fewer systems and implementing automation). In addition, there is still more efficiency that can be gained through tiering.

The bulk of our employees are digital pack rats, and the bulk of their files are stored because they don’t want or need to delete them or they feel that someday down the road they may need them. Storage administrators certainly don’t know what files can or should be deleted from these accounts, so they cannot take action. That means these systems are storing lots of stagnant data. While the system needs to support new performance demands for some data, policies are required to facilitate tiering to cost-effective storage as use of files becomes stale. Having these policies in place with a tiered storage system that has a dense, low performance, and less expensive storage tier is critical to supporting online file sharing environments efficiently. You may have tens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of users that need some files fast, likely all of them at the start of the day, and those require your high-performance storage. The rest does not, and that is the bulk of your data—so tiering can help reduce the footprint and overall cost of the hardware infrastructure.

How EMC Isilon Meets the OFS Challenge

EMC’s Isilon offering is largely recognized as the “father of scale-out storage.” It pioneered the concept of commercially viable scale-out storage appliances that are easy to use and applicable to enterprise business use cases.

Because of its scale-out nature, the EMC Isilon platform can scale performance with capacity. As new nodes are added, they are absorbed into the platform, which automatically load balances and tunes, so storage admins do not have to spend their time creating LUNs, allocating storage, and then migrating data—it just happens. And it also supports tiering with Smartpools, so newer, active data can be on higher performance nodes while older, static data can be stored on dense and efficient nodes. And it scales to tens of PBs of capacity (144 nodes) that are all managed within a single namespace. This all combines to make EMC Isilon an ideal platform for consolidation.

Regarding time to provision new capacity, EMC Isilon’s scale-out nature gives it granular scale—nodes can be added as required, for just-in-time scalability, while the push-button provisioning brings capacity online quickly. And it is a

http://www.isilon.com/



high-availability system that can withstand up to four drive or node failures and offers remote replication so it can be set up to even withstand a site failure.

Supporting a private cloud for online file sharing and collaboration is a two headed monster—both the end-user experience and the administrative experience must be addressed, or end-users will just use their own private accounts. EMC Isilon’s strong commitment to designing for performance, scale, time to scale, and availability make it a well suited platform for supporting a private corporate online file sharing initiative and ensuring the end-user experience can be a good one. And it ensures the storage administrative end of the equation with a scalable, automated, efficient platform for consolidation.



The Bigger Truth

It is time to start paying closer attention to your file data. You may not depend on file data to keep the lights on, but your employees depend on it to get their day to day work done. Not only that, but for many companies, their core intellectual property is file-based departmental data—i.e., engineering design files, contracts, graphics, blueprints, formulas, or just conceptual documents that have yet to progress to design phase but could hold tremendous value for the company over time. Do you really want that data in someone’s personal file sharing account? To be easily accessible to an employee that is no longer with the company? Do you want to expose your corporate network to untrusted cloud-based applications? That is what is happening today. It is time to pay attention and get control over file data by providing a corporately sanctioned solution that supports your requirements for security and control of data. You can accomplish that by building your own file sharing cloud—but it needs to be built on the right infrastructure.

Facing accelerated data growth driven by file server consolidation efforts and the need to support mobile users, scale-out platforms, such as those offered by EMC Isilon, are a necessity. You just can’t do this with a traditional storage approach.

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Enterprise Strategy Group: Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon