EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)

The EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) platform (the former name "Project Neil") is infrastructure of storage for a hyper scalable cloud which will change economic aspects of the cloud storage for customers and service providers irrespective of the industry and an enterprise scale. ECS combines usability, flexibility and profitability of a public cloud with the level of control and security of a local private cloud.

The EMC ECS platform combines usability and flexibility of a public cloud with the level of control and security of a local private cloud. At the same time in case of implementation for object storage total cost of ownership of EMC ECS is 9 — 28% lower than a cloud of Amazon and Google. ECS allows customers to add features for a hyper scalable cloud on the existing Wednesdays of a private and hybrid cloud, providing at the same time ease of use thanks to self service features, completely automated selection of resources and services of data management for applications of the next generation.

In the conditions of wide use of applications of the next generation on mobile devices data create new difficult tasks for customers and service providers: data should be available, protected and support functions of analytics, and infrastructure of storage should adapt to sharp growth. ECS is the building horizontally scalable solution providing an industry-leading indicator of density on mounting unit of a rack (up to 2.9 PB of capacity in one rack). Thanks to a clustering it can reach ekzabaytny level — today it is one of important requirements of "the third platform".

The customers who selected the environment of a public cloud for data storage often get certain advantages (such as ease of use and scaling option) immediately, but they can face other risks — for example, shutdown of systems and costs for data transfer on Wednesday of a public cloud and from it. In many cases it should be faced also problems of compliance to requirements of regulators as they can not know where their data are stored as their backup is executed (and whether it is executed) and whether they are available to unauthorized users. EMC ECS provides the solution which excludes such compromises inherent in a public cloud.

2016: Elastic Cloud Storage 3.0

On October 31, 2016 the Dell EMC company announced upgrade of the platform of data storage of Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage 3.0.

General idea of the upgraded system

• The object platform of data storage Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage 3.0 helps to solve problems of data management in "cloud focused" environments of the next generation
• The analytical report of ESG company confirmed that ECS has total cost of ownership 60% lower, than options on the basis of a public cloud
• Gartner placed EMC in number of leaders in the rating of Magic Quadrant "The Distributed File and Object Storages"
• The solution ECS 3.0 allows customers to upgrade data processing centers at the expense of an expanded set of models of use of cloud services of storage; the technology is certified for use on the Dell EMC PowerEdge servers
• ECS Dedicated Cloud Service provides selection of resources for the selected ECS blocks working in Virtustream data processing centers in the world
• The hardware ECS systems of series D provide increase in capacity for 63% in comparison with the equipment of the previous generation

Representation of opportunities of Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) 3.0, (2016)

Certification and upgrade

By software of ECS it is certified for work on the PowerEdge servers (in particular, on Dell EMC DSS 7000 and Dell EMC PowerEdge R730xd). Released Dell EMC the device of high density of series D created as an alternative to tape drives. Devices of series D provide capacity up to 6.2 PB in one rack that is 63% more than opportunities of other hardware solutions of ECS. Service of ECS Dedicated Cloud Service with assistance of Virtustream. ECS Dedicated Cloud Service is completely managed service, it provides selection of resources for the ECS blocks working in Virtustream data processing centers around the world. The service of ECS Dedicated Cloud Service will be offered on the terms of target availability (DA) at the end of 2016. Multilevel storage in a cloud. The solution ECS is certified as the cloud level of storage for Dell EMC Data Domain Cloud Tier. Support of Windows applications. In the new version of ECS 3.0 support of Windows applications which require CIFS/SMB access is implemented. Expanded corporate functions. ECS 3.0 offers advanced functionality of control of compliance to regulatory requirements, the improved infrastructure of monitoring and the notification, the increased utilization coefficient of resources of storage

ECS 3.0 and devices of series D are available to the order. Customers can load and test the latest version on the product website. The service of ECS Dedicated Cloud Service will be offered certain customers since the end of 2016, the official release is planned for the beginning of 2017.

According to the analytical report Gartner, Dell EMC is the leader in a cloud segment. For the enterprises more and more relevant are problems of expansion and acceleration of use of data, control of growth of infrastructure and cost reduction. Completely it is impossible to pass to cloud model in a flash. But corporate customers can consider cloud opportunities from the very first stages of digital transformation. Only this way data will help to reduce costs and to raise the profit of the organization. Jeremy Burton, marketing director of Dell Technologies

2015

Elastic Cloud Storage 2.2

• Search in metadata of billions of objects without the selected database
• Increase in density of storage for 33%, efficiency of DWH – for 10%
• Data encryption of D@RE. It means that the companies conducting activity in verticals where compliance to requirements of regulators is important will be able to construct and implement the storage system equivalent to a public cloud which automates application the politician of enciphering for confidential data protection.

ECS (Elastic Cloud Storage) v2.2 includes most item collection of cloud software-defined data storage (SDS) with high rates of scaling (up to exabytes of data). The software module of storage of unstructured data which can be established on any normal equipment is the cornerstone of the solution and be delivered as in the form of the software solution, and a hardware-software system.

EMC ECS is a multi-purpose platform with support of a set of protocols (such as AWS S3, OpenStack Swift, HDFS) capable to replace separate storage systems. Due to support the NFS product can work with file data without additional gateway.

Together with EMC ECS v2.2 users can look for the necessary metadata among exabytes of unstructured data – and all this without additional databases and auxiliary tools. Such approach allows analysts easier to take valuable information from unstructured data and also considerably simplifies development cloud and IoT-applications. The solution is compatible to the most part of products of independent program vendors (ISV), for example such as Hortonworks (ECS 2.2 underwent certification at 4 HDP levels).

With growth of amounts of the stored and transmitted data to the forefront in addition to reliability there are a simplicity of architecture, ease of scaling and high performance. However complexity of architecture (blocking, replication, high availability) and access on the distributed networks, a big variety of the equipment and the technologies intended for storage of different data types reduce efficiency of traditional file DWH and do them too expensive in service and scaling. EMC ECS is urged to optimize costs of customers, offering the most convenient service and data protection.

The software-defined data warehouse of ECS 2.2 supports enciphering of "data at rest" and also shows a full compliance to requirements of acts of SEC 17 of a-4 (f) and CFTC of 1.31 (b) - (c). Thanks to what users can provide due protection of information, crucial for business.

Elastic Cloud Storage 2.0

On August 6, 2015 the EMS corporation provided upgraded version of object storage EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) 2.0.

The solution ECS 2.0 is the fourth software-defined storage system of EMC (after ScaleIO, ViPR Controller and CoprHD), it is available to free download, testing and individual completion by users.

• Stability of a system in the distributed installations is increased. The solution ECS provides automatic switching to a fallback resource, preserving of access to objects in case of temporary shutdown of the platform and automatic synchronization of platforms after repeated connection of all zones. Also ECS provides fast recovery at failures irrespective of scale and the number of platforms.
• The new ECS 2.0 graphical interface provides simple and intuitive to the user of a management tool a system. Installation in the new version is executed of one ECS node and does not depend on separate ViPR of the controller any more. The enterprises can provide services of cloud storage from the first day of installation of a system.
• Management of users and quotas. The ECS 2.0 portal provides idle time and secure access to management of users and containers of objects. The user can manage quotas and also define thresholds and notifications.
• Speed and efficiency in the distributed installations is increased. In ECS 2.0 function of geo-caching at the level of a local array for reduction of time of data access from remote platforms is implemented.
• New indicators of monitoring and diagnostics of a system. In ECS 2.0 provides information on key metrics of storage system and metrics of geo-replication in diagrams and summary reports. It allows to visualize trends and the current utizilization of a system and also to provide to users the reporting.

The version of ECS has no restriction on functionality and validity period and is intended for non-productive environments. The solution is available to loading in the test mode.

Notes