StorSimple Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS)

StorSimple Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS)

StorSimple cloud-integrated storage provides primary storage, backup, archive, and disaster recovery, combined with Microsoft Azure. This allows you to optimize total storage costs and increase data protection and service agility. With StorSimple, you can integrate the public cloud with on-premises storage to reduce datacenter infrastructure complexity, maximize data protection, reduce overall storage total cost of ownership (TCO) by 60-80%, and provision storage more rapidly to reclaim IT time cycles.

Benefits

Some key benfits of StorSimple Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS) are given below

Reduce Overall Storage TCO by 60-80%

Significantly reduce storage capital expenses (primary backup, archives, disaster recovery (DR)) and related support cost.

Maximize Data Protection

Automate backups using local and cloud snapshots to ensure constant data protection. Dramatically improve recovery time objectives (RTO) by downloading only active data sets.

Reduce Datacenter Infrastructure Complexity

Deploy a single StorSimple system—integrated with Microsoft Azure Storage—to consolidate primary storage, backup hardware and software, archives, and disaster recovery.

Provision Storage More Rapidly and Reclaim IT Time Cycles

Add storage capacity in minutes for primary, archive, and backup data, and reclaim significant administrative time by automating backup and archiving procedures.

Test and Improve Disaster Recovery Function

Multi-location disaster recovery is now as fast and simple as mounting a cloud snapshot.

Capabilities

Enterprise-class storage

StorSimple solutions offer enterprise-class high-availability with fully redundant disk controllers, power supplies, network connections and no single point of failure. They also support non-disruptive software upgrades.

AES-256 security

All data stored in the cloud with StorSimple has AES-256 encryption applied to it. The encryption key is never given to StorSimple or the cloud provider, ensuring complete data privacy to support compliance requirements as stringent as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Solid state disk performance with cloud elasticity + economics

Applications get local SSD performance with the elasticity of the cloud through automatic tiering based on a BlockRankTM algorithm that does for blocks of content what Page Rank does for Google.

Instant thin provisioning of massive live archives

Instant thin provisioning enables you to provision Instantly and thinly provision massive archive volumes with live access and cloud economics. Automatic tiering moves older blocks to the cloud without the need for complex archival procedures

Fast backup and near instant restore using the cloud

Incremental, deduplicated snapshots reduce storage requirements by more than 90%, while delivering instant snapshot and restore technology in minutes as opposed to days. Cloud Snapshots offer offsite data protection via the cloud. It is now simple and cost-effective to retain as many snapshots as you need – no more 30, 60 or 90-day limits.

Fast multi-location disaster recovery without tape

Backups made to the cloud can be recovered to the same location or a different location. Disaster recovery is now as fast and simple as mounting a volume. Now you can replace tape without having to double your storage infrastructure investment.

One solution means simple integrated management

Separate primary storage, archival, backup/restore, and disaster recovery hardware means multiple separate management consoles. One integrated console makes it dramatically simpler to manage the whole storage infrastructure, freeing up IT resources.

Application-optimized storage and data protection

Application-optimized volumes are supported for Windows file shares, SharePoint and VMware libraries. Full support for VSS application-consistent snapshots is provided.

Cloud-integrated Storage (CiS) At A Glance

Quick Reference Guide - DNS

What is DNS

We are now in the age of Cloud Computing or more specifically Virtualization platform. Every resources we are using, delivered to us as a service model. In that scenario communication system takes a major role. Because in Cloud Computing platform all resources are distributed over the Cloud and we access them as per our requirement where communication system or network is the backbone. We can identify or access the network resource by its name or IP address only. This Name Resolution service is manged and provided by DNS. Without proper DNS the big like Cloud Computing or the small like Printer Sharing is not possible. So, here we try to understand a little bit about DNS.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities. Most prominently, it translates easily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for the purpose of locating computer services and devices worldwide. The Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet.


An often-used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the phone book for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, the domain name www.example.com translates to the addresses 93.184.216.119 (IPv4) and 2606:2800:220:6d:26bf:1447:1097:aa7 (IPv6). Unlike a phone book, the DNS can be quickly updated, allowing a service's location on the network to change without affecting the end users, who continue to use the same host name. Users take advantage of this when they use meaningful Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), and e-mail addresses without having to know how the computer actually locates the services.


The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and mapping those names to IP addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain. Authoritative name servers are assigned to be responsible for their supported domains, and may delegate authority over subdomains to other name servers. This mechanism provides distributed and fault tolerant service and was designed to avoid the need for a single central database.


The DNS translates Internet domain and host names to IP addresses. DNS automatically converts the names we type in our Web browser address bar to the IP addresses of Web servers hosting those sites.
DNS implements a distributed database to store this name and address information for all public hosts on the Internet. DNS assumes IP addresses do not change (are statically assigned rather than dynamically assigned).


The DNS database resides on a hierarchy of special database servers. When clients like Web browsers issue requests involving Internet host names, a piece of software called the DNS resolver (usually built into the network operating system) first contacts a DNS server to determine the server's IP address. If the DNS server does not contain the needed mapping, it will in turn forward the request to a different DNS server at the next higher level in the hierarchy. After potentially several forwarding and delegation messages are sent within the DNS hierarchy, the IP address for the given host eventually arrives at the resolver, that in turn completes the request over Internet Protocol.


DNS additionally includes support for caching requests and for redundancy. Most network operating systems support configuration of primary, secondary, and tertiary DNS servers, each of which can service initial requests from clients. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) maintain their own DNS servers and use DHCP to automatically configure clients, relieving most home users of the burden of DNS configuration.


The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned.


The Domain Name System also specifies the technical functionality of this database service. It defines the DNS protocol, a detailed specification of the data structures and data communication exchanges used in DNS, as part of the Internet Protocol Suite.

The Internet maintains two principal namespaces, the domain name hierarchy and the Internet Protocol (IP) address spaces. The Domain Name System maintains the domain name hierarchy and provides translation services between it and the address spaces. Internet name servers and a communication protocol implement the Domain Name System. A DNS name server is a server that stores the DNS records for a domain name, such as address (A or AAAA) records, name server (NS) records, and mail exchanger (MX) records.

Some Important DNS Record Types 

A records

Address (A) records direct a hostname to a numerical IP address. For example, if you want mycomputer.yourdomain.com to point to your home computer (which is, for example, 192.168.0.3), you would enter a record that looks like:

mycomputer.yourdomain.com. A 192.168.0.3 

You must put a period after the hostname. Do not put periods after IP addresses.

CNAME records

CNAME allows a machine to be known by one or more hostnames. There must always be an A record first, and this is known as the canonical or official name. For example: yourdomain.com. A 192.168.0.1
Using CNAME, you can point other hostnames to the canonical (A record) address. For example:


ftp.yourdoman.com. CNAME yourdomain.com.
mail.yourdomain.com. CNAME yourdomain.com.
ssh.yourdomin.com. CNAME yourdomain.com.

CNAME records make it possible to access your domain through ftp.yourdomain.com, mail.yourdomain.com, etc. Without a proper CNAME record, you will not be able to connect to your server using such addresses.

NAMESERVER (NS) records

NS records specify the authoritative nameservers for the domain. Changing NS records may cause your site to stop working. There is generally no need to change NS records.  For example:

yourdomain.com NS ns1.slamdot.com.

MX records

MX or Mail Exchanger record is required e-mail service to work. Please note that changing MX records will prevent your current POP3 accounts, forwarders, autoresponders, and mailing lists from functioning.

PTR records

Pointer records (PTR) are used for reverse lookups. For example, to make 192.168.0.1 resolve to www.yourdomain.com, the record would look like:

1.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa PTR www.yourdomain.com.

PTR records are only effective if named.conf is manually edited and the proper zone information is added. This can only be done by a root user (the server Admin).