What is StorSimple device?
The Microsoft Azure StorSimple device is an on-premises hybrid storage array that provides primary storage and iSCSI access to data stored on it. It manages communication with cloud storage, and helps to ensure the security and confidentiality of all data that is stored on the Microsoft Azure StorSimple solution.
Let us imagine a file server (or cluster) that has many terabytes of data. Like with most companies, data builds up and up, and is not managed. No one wants to stick their head over the trench to attempt to manage the data and IT is forced to find budget for expensive SAN capacity. A small amount of that data is hot, some of it is warm, but most of the data is never touched. StorSimple is delivered through SSD and HDD based storage arrays that provide better performance and IOPS than tape storage. Storage array that extends on-premises storage seamlessly to the cloud.
Azure StorSimple devices store data locally and in the cloud (based on usage). Data is transferred from on-premise devices to cloud over the Internet securely (support Encryption in Motion), all data is encrypted before it is sent to cloud storage.
How it works?
The StorSimple Data Manager service identifies StorSimple data in the cloud from a StorSimple 8000 series on-premises device. The StorSimple data in the cloud is deduped, compressed StorSimple format. The Data Manager service provides APIs to extract the StorSimple format data and transform it into other formats such as Azure blobs and Azure Files. This transformed data is then readily consumed by Azure HDInsight and Azure Media services. The data transformation thus enables these services to operate upon the transformed StorSimple data from StorSimple 8000 series on-premises device.
StorSimple Appliance Specifications
The latest release 8000 series offers 15 TB or 40 TB of local HDD storage with between 800 GB and 2 TB of SSD capacity. With the compression offered by StorSimple, we will get up to 15 TB or 200 TB of on-premise capacity, depending on the nature of the data. The 8000 series also offer deeper integration with Microsoft Azure. A Microsoft Azure StoreSimple Manager provides a new management experience and a Microsoft Azure Virtual Appliance provides us with a way to use Azure IaaS as a DR solution for our on-premises StorSimple appliance.
“The maximum recommended full backup size when using an 8100 as a primary backup target is 10TiB. The maximum recommended full backup size when using an 8600 as a primary backup target is 20TiB”
“Backups will be written to array, such that they reside entirely within the local storage capacity”.
Security is a major concern for anyone who is adopting a new technology, especially when the technology is used with confidential or proprietary data.
Azure StorSimple supports different configuration based on the level of security is required. These features include Encryption Key Management, Data Isolation – Volume Container, Host Network Security – TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE), iSCSI SAN isolation.
StorSimple supports RSA 2048 and AES 256 encryption algorithms to protect data stored and in motion.
Also, Azure StorSimple provides comprehensive access control, authorization and authentication mechanism.
