Intelligent Data Management Technology
In the realm of data storage, flexibility has often been a challenging goal to achieve. Traditionally, configuring data storage systems was akin to setting parameters in stone – once established, they were challenging to adapt or expand without significant disruption. Our software AiRE, however, redefines this paradigm with its innovative pooled storage approach and a 128-bit file system that knows no physical bounds.
Pooled Storage Approach
Breaking Free from Physical Constraints
The traditional approach to data storage involved configuring parameters for an entire system, leaving little room for adaptability. If requirements changed, the system often had to be wiped clean and reconfigured from scratch, or entirely new storage arrays had to be procured. AiRE disrupts this conventional wisdom with its revolutionary pooled storage approach.
AiRE’s pooled storage approach allows the creation of an unlimited number of datasets within separate data pools, all residing in the same unit. These datasets can each have their unique set of hundreds of parameters, making it a versatile solution for organizations with diverse storage needs. What truly sets AiRE apart is its utilization of profiles and policies to simplify the optimization of these parameters.
Workload Optimization
Tailoring Storage for Specific Needs
To cater to the diverse requirements of modern data systems, our software AiRE introduces the concept of profiles and policies. Three primary profiles – performance, resilience, and optimization – serve as blueprints for tailoring storage to specific needs.
- Performance Profile: When optimizing for performance, AiRE prioritizes lower latency and higher throughputs, making it ideal for workloads such as virtual machines (VMs) that require quick response times.
- Resilience Profile: For safeguarding mission-critical data, AiRE emphasizes redundant backups, external replication, and robust protection mechanisms to prevent data loss.
- Optimization Profile: When efficiency is paramount, AiRE minimizes system load and maximizes storage space utilization, reducing costs and resource consumption.
These profiles are further complemented by pre-defined policies rooted in best practices, which can be customized as needed. These policies adjust essential parameters such as I/O path management, cache behavior, and block size to align with the selected profile, offering adaptability and control. AiRE also supports variable data block sizes for volumes and filesystems, ensuring the system can seamlessly accommodate diverse workload profiles.
Powerful Data Storage Reduction Algorithms
In the quest for efficient data management, our software AiRE deploys cutting-edge data storage reduction algorithms that significantly enhance storage capacity and performance. These algorithms are designed to streamline data storage while minimizing resource consumption.
In-line Deduplication
Efficient Data Deduplication at the Block Level
AiRE employs a robust in-line deduplication process using cryptographically strong 256-bit checksums, such as SHA256. This technique identifies redundant data blocks and eliminates them in real-time during data storage operations. What sets AiRE’s deduplication apart is its granularity – it allows deduplication to be applied on a per-dataset basis. This ensures that data reduction efforts are finely tuned to individual datasets, optimizing storage efficiency.
In-line Compression
Real-time Compression for Minimal Footprint
AiRE further optimizes storage by employing in-line compression during the data writing process, rather than applying compression as a separate post-write operation. This approach combines space-efficient algorithms like GZIP9 with high-performance options like LZ4, depending on the specific requirements of the data. The result is faster data operations and a minimal storage footprint, allowing organizations to get the most out of their storage resources.
Intelligent Data Protection and Recovery
In the realm of data management, safeguarding data against corruption and ensuring swift and reliable recovery options are of paramount importance. Our software AiRE offers a suite of intelligent data protection and recovery features that provide organizations with robust safeguards and peace of mind.
Guarding Against Silent Data Corruption
Mitigating Risks of Undetected Data Issues
Silent data corruption, which includes problems like data decay and unnoticed errors, can pose significant data integrity challenges. AiRE addresses these concerns with its data protection solutions.
- RAID-Z Configuration: AiRE employs a special configuration known as RAID-Z, which offers protection against various data corruption scenarios. RAID-Z distributes data across multiple disks and includes parity information, which helps detect and correct errors, ensuring data remains intact.
- MIRROR Topologies: In situations where redundancy is a priority, AiRE utilizes MIRROR topologies, where it creates mirrored copies of data, reducing the risk of data loss.
AiRE’s data protection methods offer a cost-effective and adaptable alternative to dedicated hardware solutions.
Ensuring End-to-End Data Integrity with Self-Repair
Preserving Data Consistency from Start to Finish
Maintaining data integrity is of utmost importance, and our software AiRE takes a comprehensive approach. Each data block undergoes a checksum process, and the resulting checksum is stored in a reference, rather than within the block itself. This checksum process extends throughout the entire data hierarchy up to the root node, creating a robust end-to-end data integrity framework.
When data is read, its checksum is calculated and compared to the expected value. Should a discrepancy be found, AiRE employs a self-repair mechanism. This mechanism uses the checksum results and data from the storage configuration to rectify corrupted data blocks, ensuring data remains reliable and consistent.
This meticulous approach to data integrity results in a self-repairing file system, offering end-to-end data protection against corruption and errors.
Data Recovery and Replication Using Snapshots
Efficient Strategies for Data Retrieval and Replication
Our software AiRE introduces a powerful data recovery and replication method through its snapshot functionality, offering organizations flexible options to safeguard their data:
- Point-in-Time Snapshots: AiRE utilizes a copy-on-write transactional model that enables the creation of point-in-time, immutable snapshots. These snapshots allow organizations to quickly revert data to specific states, facilitating swift recovery from events such as malware attacks like ransomware. This technology also enables the creation of instant clones without imposing additional space requirements, streamlining data management.
- Block-Level Incremental Replication: AiRE’s snapshot system is designed for efficiency. It replicates snapshots at the block level, synchronizing only the differences between different snapshots. This approach minimizes bandwidth and storage requirements for on-site and off-site replication.
Leveraging Vault for Enterprise Data Archiving
Ensuring Data Safety and Compliance
Customers can set up off-site replication and mirror to STORViX’s GDPR-compliant data centers using the Vault cloud service. Data can be sent to and recovered from Vault securely in the cloud. Customers can also recover data by having the physical drives shipped to them. Our roadmap includes the capability to transfer files from other data streams to Vault as well.
All data sent to Vault is protected with SHA AES 256 encryption in transit and at rest. The data is secured with FIDO2 multi-factor authentication (MFA) on physical drives in our own geographically separated data centers in Sweden, Italy, and other EU countries. Customer data is processed in compliance with a strict zero-knowledge privacy policy and data processing agreement that goes beyond the statutory minimum.
AI technologies enhancing our software AiRE
Our software AiRE harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to elevate its capabilities, offering organizations a more proactive and intelligent approach to data management and support.
Telemetry and Real-Time Analysis
Real-Time Data Insights for Enhanced Performance
AiRE sends telemetry data to the cloud, where it undergoes analysis by the CloudSight processing engine. This telemetry encompasses a wealth of information, including performance metrics, system configurations, health status, workload types, and capacity utilization.
CloudSight employs machine learning algorithms to identify signs of suboptimization, errors, or potential issues. This real-time analysis empowers AI-driven alerts, promptly notifying both customers and the STORViX SmartCARE team of emerging problems. Additionally, CloudSight leverages this data to generate various reports and prescriptive analytics, providing valuable insights into system performance and health.
Predictive Capacity Insights
Supporting Flexible Pricing with Future Capacity Predictions
One of CloudSight’s unique capabilities lies in its ability to generate predictions of future capacity usage. This prediction is pivotal in supporting FlexiPay, a dynamic pricing model for both physical and virtual AiRE instances. By understanding future resource requirements, organizations can optimize their usage and budget effectively.
Centralized Fleet Management
Efficient Control Over AiRE Instances
Building on the power of telemetry data, our software AiRE extends its capabilities to offer centralized fleet management. This enhancement allows organizations to efficiently distribute software updates, configuration changes, and other commands to as many AiRE instances as needed simultaneously. This level of control streamlines system-wide updates and ensures consistent management across the fleet.
Proactive Support and Self-Driving Optimization
Empowering Proactive and Automated Support
In addition to telemetry and centralized fleet management, our software AiRE introduces proactive support features:
- CoPILOT Connect: This feature ensures that remote assistance is always enabled, allowing the STORViX SmartCARE team to implement fixes, optimizations, and other corrective measures efficiently through the two-way cloud connection.
- AutoPILOT: Taking proactive support a step further, AutoPILOT is an AI-driven system that autonomously performs optimizations, fixes, and system administration tasks. It leverages carefully trained machine learning algorithms, continuously analyzing AiRE’s telemetry data in real-time. AutoPILOT can identify and resolve issues automatically, and when faced with a problem beyond its capabilities, it can flag it for human intervention, ensuring that no critical issue goes unaddressed. This AI-driven approach enables datasets to be continuously optimized, adapting to changing workloads over time with automated profile recognition and policy enforcement.
