How to use Object Storage to Gain Cloud Superpowers
Demetrius M.
Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery | Cyber Resilience Leader | Senior Product Manager - Azure Storage | Go-To Market Strategist
Marvel your way to Data Persistence Heaven
Greetings?from the desk of?Data Protection Guy! Before diving in, we want to make sure you stay abreast of the latest insights in the Data Protection / Backup & Recovery / and Security Industries by giving you easy access to our podcast —Data Protection Gumbo:
In episode # 144 we have a very insightful conversation with?AB Periasamy, the Co-Founder and CEO of?MinIO?about Object Storage. In this interview, he shares his views on object storage, microservices in the data protection space, and the role APIs play in Data Management. I’ll share a tidbit of our conversation. For the entire episode, please click the link above.
What was it like when you started hearing about microservices and containers (Kubernetes)? Where were you and when did you first hear about microservices and Kubernetes?
AB Periasamy:?I learned the right way to learn about a subject is to learn the history and mathematics of any subject you want to learn. It started as a hype. And, there's some hype component to it, but there are real benefits and that's why it's sustained; otherwise the hype would’ve evaporated. There were actually several initiatives from Mesosphere to Cloud Foundry to several competing technologies around. But then you can see, even Docker Swarm, and Docker Compose; everything settled and Kubernetes emerged as a standard along with the containers.
But here is what actually happened. MinIO is built in pure Go language. When you compile the MinIO binary, it spits out a single static binary and if you tell the architecture whether it's ARM or POWER8-9 etc… or on a Windows executable it spits out. Even if you spit out a Linux executable, if the architecture is the same whether it's Ubuntu or CentOS or Ruby on Rails or SUSE Linux, it just runs.
It's a single static binary. And back then it was like 20 MB or so now including all the graphical management console. It is still less than 100 MB and when it started, I noticed the community was putting this in a container. The container was actually much bigger. Back then there was no Alpine Linux or the tiny image like the runtime image. All of that basically created a bulky container image and the community started doing this on their own.
Our download page was only a static binary, not even RPM or DEB, like native packages because it's a binary, just download and run. It cannot get simpler than that. No installation required, just download and run. It’s a Windows executable. I Love simplicity.
This was pre-Kubernetes. I now noticed that the community was maintaining a Docker image of MinIO. Now an image was much bigger because it had Ubuntu runtime. Then I asked, why are you doing this? The community told me that is how they build the application stack. If I'm running a PHP or Node.js or PostgreSQL, everything is containerized. I cannot leave MinIO on a bare metal static binary. I understand it's easy, but I want everything to be containerized. So I can craft a single yaml file and spin it up and that is reproducibility. It's automation.
I want to make sure that the community gets a high quality image. We took over the official image and then started releasing Docker images from there. Kubernetes was a natural evolution because you need to manage this orchestration. It led to today like around 1.3 million Docker pools per day.
Books on my desk
I must admit that I’m still reading the first couple of chapters, but already intrigued to learn just how wrong I really am, when it comes to improving my own life.
Cybersecurity preparedness — Biden said “yes”
Help is on the way! Training, curriculums, and technical assistance is coming to a virtual Zoom data center near you. The U.S.’ National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium (NCPC) Act was signed into law to help prepare for and respond to cybersecurity risks at the national, state, and local levels, by President Biden last week.
It became public law no:?117-122. on 5/12/22. Make sure you read and understand this law to tap into some of the training opportunities related to cross-sector cybersecurity training and simulation exercises for state and local governments, critical infrastructure owners and operators, and the private industry.
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