StorageCraft’s Exablox Object Storage Solution … and, Skiing.

I’m sitting here at my desk and glancing over at the calendar … yes, it’s March 23rd already!

Yeah, it’s the end of the quarter and all across the business world, deals are being made to close the quarter out.

Having been in the storage world, I know for a fact that …

• Storage vendors are offering discounts on “Trashcan Upgrades” to new models so the customer doesn’t feel too violated.
• Storage vendors are discounting their overpriced SSDs and HDDs to points where they’re only say 3X what you could actually buy the darn thing for on the open market.

That’s life in the traditional storage world.

That’s life in the Block Storage world.

Why am I bringing this up?

Simply, friends don’t let friends waste money on Block Storage. Heck, even if I never met ya, I wouldn't want you to waste money on anything.

So, if you’re looking to buy and trying to work out a deal on some Block Storage …

STOP!

Before you commit to purchasing anything,

    … take a look at Object Storage …

Take a look at StorageCraft’s Exablox Object Storage solution.

Heck, it’s 2017 … if you aren’t investing in Object Storage, you’re investing in a legacy storage technology … period.

Think of this … if your company has a DR site or you’re an MSP who hosts replicated customer’s backups for DR purposes and you can’t ensure the integrity of that data?

Or … you have production data for that VMware vSphere infrastructure, and you can’t ensure the integrity of that data?

What?!

OMG! That’s insane!

When Amazon built S3, they didn’t use Block Storage. No, they implemented Object Storage. Why? Because they didn’t want to lose their customer’s data and the storage solution had to easily scale out moving forward into the future.

And don’t forget that cost is a factor in any business decision … so, sourcing say an SSD from a storage vendor for $5,000 or more is simply asinine.

That’s right … asinine.

I guess this partially leads to the rationale why storage vendors make you purchase the drives from them and then price them in the stratospheric realm … ‘cause they’re “certified” or something similar. Well, in the end, that adjective doesn’t do anything to extend the average lifespan for that disk. An HDD’s lifespan, and arguably an SSD’s lifespan as well (since it is dependent upon write cycles), is 3-5 years. I don’t care what sticker you place on that drive, and I don’t care what adjective you use to describe that drive … it has an average lifespan, with that, some live longer and some live shorter … but they all fail eventually.

With Object Storage … with an Exablox Object Storage solution, we don’t care about that sticker or that adjective that somehow magically justifies an exorbitant price for a drive. 

Nope, we don’t.

Source your own drives for an Exablox Object Storage solution.

Using Exablox Object Storage, the Exablox OneBlox Object Storage software will write out 3 copies of the data (using fixed or variable length deduplication) and if one copy ain’t good, it’ll automatically go to the next copy and retrieve that data. Swapping out a bad drive or an Exablox OneBlox storage node in a Ring (cluster), the data automatically redistributes itself.

It’s that simple.

And yes, you can encrypt all that data at rest at AES 256 in an Exablox Object Storage solution.

And let me remind you once again … with Exablox, you can source your own drives … at that will be at a price that won’t embarrass you if you tell anyone.

Well … what the heck does this all have to do with skiing?

For many decades, skis had little or no sidecut … we refer to those skis today as Straight Skis. Learning to ski on those darn things was fairly difficult for most, but brought some memorable crashes and falls for a lot of us over the years. Then in the 1990’s, new Shaped Skis with significant sidecut were introduced. These skis were easy to turn and made life really easy for all levels from beginner to expert. There was a time when both types of skis were manufactured and sold, Straight Skis and Shaped Skis were a choice in the 90's. Today, all skis manufactured and sold worldwide are Shaped Skis with a very small exception where Straight Skis are made for mogul skiing, more so for competitive mogul skiing. Straight Skis from days gone by are typically found hanging on display down in a man cave on the walls or cut up and made into benches, chairs, tables, or … shot-skis.

The evolution of skis is akin to the evolution of storage where Block Storage equates to those legacy Straight Skis and Object Storage equates to what is found today, Shaped Skis. In 2017, we’re around the time in the mid-1990’s with the ski analogy where people are finally ‘getting it’ with Object Storage and abandoning legacy Block Storage products and technologies. As with Straight Skis, with Block Storage, there will always be those special niche use cases, but in time … not long from today … Object Storage will be the predominant storage technology sold worldwide.

Like with Straight Skis, you could take or soon will be able to take that legacy Block Storage SAN and repurpose the chassis as a bench, chair, or table … or maybe a Shot-SAN?

I’d pay to see a Shot-SAN in operation.

Want to know more about StorageCraft’s Exablox Object Storage? Check out these Datasheets:

https://www.exablox.com/whats-inside/index.php

Invest wisely.

Invest in Object Storage.

Invest in StorageCraft’s Exablox Object Storage.

-Rich Werhun