Reduce Costs and Move Data to Azure, AWS or any S3 Compatible Cloud

Webinar Flow

These are the pointers we touched up on in the webinar:

• Legacy Infrastructure – considerations and costs.
• What’s StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway?
• Integrating Cloud Technology.
• Use-cases of StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway.
• Main Features of Smart Cloud Gateway.

Legacy Infrastructure – considerations and costs

When acquiring the infrastructure, it generates high CapEx and running it leads to large OpEx. The OpEx costs include routine maintenance costs and the costs of repairs in the event of hardware failure or a disaster. The overall cost of legacy infrastructure grows proportionally with the volume of data. Data growth is explosive – implying that using legacy infrastructure for such data is very expensive.

Other than the financial challenges, legacy infrastructures also present the challenge of scalability. Traditional infrastructures are difficult to scale and even if you do manage to scale-out these systems, it becomes a complex mix that’s difficult to manage and control.  With scaled-out traditional infrastructure, users have to navigate through a complex system just to get their desired files or data.

Another challenge that comes with legacy infrastructure is compliance issues. Due to the lack of sufficient tools and the vulnerabilities of legacy infrastructure, setting up a compliant storage or backup solution is always difficult.

In summary, legacy infrastructures:

• Incur high CapEx and OpEx costs.
• Don’t scale easily.
• Are difficult to manage and control.
• Make it difficult to comply with industry regulations like FedRAMP, CJIS, HIPAA/HITRUST etc.

Integrating Cloud technology

Users can choose to setup an on-premises Smart Cloud Gateway solution and map it as a storage repository to servers or applications running in the enterprise IT environments. Users can also configure StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway as a virtual appliance and install it on any VMware or Hyper-V environment.

User-defined policies control when the Smart Cloud Gateway moves data from its current storage media to the other.

StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway facilitates a number of automated data transfer combinations. Here are the data transfer combinations StoneFly Smart Cloud gateway supports:

• Data transfer from one on-premises infrastructure to another local storage/archive appliance.
• Data transfer from on-premises infrastructure to an off-site archive appliance.
• Data transfer from on-premises infrastructure to cloud storage tier (Hot blob, Cool blob, AWS S3 or S3-IA).
• Data transfer from one cloud storage tier to another (from hot blob to cool blob or from S3 to S3-IA).

Users can define two kinds of policies with StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway:

• Define a threshold based on the age of data.
• Define a threshold based on the access frequency.

Users can choose to move data after a certain period of time has passed since the data of creation or they can opt to transfer data if it’s not being accessed.

For instance, let’s say a file was created 30 days ago. Once the 30 day threshold is crossed, StoneFly Smart Cloud gateway will transfer this file from on-premises infrastructure to a user-defined location (this can be in a cloud or on another appliance or on an off-site appliance).

Another example: let’s say a user defines policies that analyze files based on their access frequency. When a file is infrequently accessed and a certain threshold is met, StoneFly Smart Cloud gateway automatically moves this file to a pre-defined location – to a cloud or to another appliance (on-premises and/or off-site).

Leverage Existing Resources – Available with two licensing options: NAS license and SAN license, StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway comes with iSCSI initiators. Users can define on-premises or off-site iSCSI storage media as iSCSI targets. StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway can be used to map these iSCSI targets as storage repositories mapped locally to applications or servers in the enterprise IT environment. User defined policies move the data within these repositories to the cloud or to other storage media – enabling infrastructure modernization and facilitating productivity with automated services.

Use-cases of StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway

StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway has a number of use-cases and applications. It can be setup to extend storage to the cloud or to enhance data management via automated policy based storage tiering. It can be used to setup data redundancy and make copies of data on different storage media – local infrastructure, off-site infrastructure or in the cloud for data protection and backup.

One of the best use-cases of StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway is data archiving. Instead of setting up Terabytes (TBs) or Petabytes (PBs) of on-premises infrastructure and bearing the cost, users can setup archiving in the cloud. The process can be easily automated by defining policies. With the integration of cloud storage tiers, businesses can effectively reduce the cost of data storage and long term data retention. They do not need to acquire additional storage media or manage large data centers. Instead they can leverage cloud technology and keep their data in the data center of their choice.

Applications of StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway include Internet of Things (IoT), Biohealth, Finance, Law industries and many more.

Main Features of StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway

StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway is a full featured enterprise solution, it delivers a number of data services. Some of them are as follows:

• Policy based, Automated storage tiering.
• Data encryption (AES 256-bit) – encryption at rest and at transit.
• Data storage Replication (Synchronous and Asynchronous)
• Data Deduplication
• And more.

To learn more about StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway, visit the product page: StoneFly Smart Cloud Gateway.

If you have any queries, feel free to send us an email at sales@staging.stonefly.com or give us a call at 510 265 1616.