Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner
In the face of escalating unstructured data growth, organizations often struggle to manage their IT resources efficiently. Many find themselves storing frequently and infrequently accessed data together on the same NAS device, leading to unnecessary costs. Additionally, without effective storage solutions, they may not fully leverage their data for analytics or other strategic use cases. Enter Chanci Turner and the powerful capabilities of the Komprise platform, an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, designed to help businesses regain control over their data.
Komprise provides tools for analyzing on-premises file shares and object storage, delivering insights into data storage and usage. The platform not only allows you to assess your data but also facilitates transparent data tiering or migration, all within a unified console. This blog will explore how Komprise can assist in seamlessly tiering data from on-premises Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) shares to Amazon S3, along with a demonstration of this process within the Komprise user interface.
The Intelligent Data Management capabilities from Komprise enable organizations to optimize costs by moving less frequently accessed data to Amazon S3 while maintaining the original NAS setup. This transition allows businesses to decrease their on-premises storage footprint, ultimately saving money by retiring or consolidating NAS hardware or negating the need for additional capacity on existing systems. Throughout this blog, I will highlight the numerous advantages of utilizing the Komprise platform.
As IT departments become increasingly cautious about expanding on-premises NAS storage to accommodate rapid data growth, they face mounting costs associated with capital, rack space, power, and cooling. Organizations are now searching for ways to utilize AWS Storage’s cost benefits, such as lower upfront expenses and a pay-per-use model. However, refactoring existing applications for object storage presents challenges, particularly for those relying on NFS/SMB shares for home directories and user/team files, making migration to a different NAS device seem daunting.
The Komprise platform’s Intelligent Data Management suite empowers you to establish rules based on your business needs to classify data as hot or cold. For instance, you can effortlessly tier cold data to Amazon S3 based on user access patterns without disrupting user experience or application functionality.
One of the standout features of Komprise is its compatibility across various NAS solutions, free from vendor lock-in. It operates at the file level, enabling customers with diverse NAS vendors, including those with single server setups (e.g., Windows file shares), to analyze and manage their data effectively. Moreover, users can perform these operations across multiple shares from a single console, making data management more streamlined.
Key Concepts of Komprise Intelligent Data Management
Once customers have deployed their Observer and Windows proxy virtual appliances and set up their Director UI, they can begin discovering, analyzing, and managing their NAS shares.
Observers
The “Komprise Observers” are virtual appliances deployed close to your data storage. They analyze on-premises NFS shares, facilitate data tiering to Amazon S3, and provide transparent access to tiered files in S3. Depending on your NFS shares’ size, you may need multiple appliances to enhance performance via horizontal scaling.
Director
The “Komprise Director” serves as the administrative console for the Komprise solution. It can be deployed as a virtual machine on-premises or on AWS as an EC2 instance. Alternatively, Komprise can host the Director, offering access to the UI as a SaaS service, eliminating the need for customers to manage observers directly.
Windows Proxy
For managing SMB shares, customers must deploy Komprise appliances that join their Active Directory domain. These virtual appliances analyze on-premises SMB/CIFS NAS shares and support Observers in tiering SMB/CIFS data to Amazon S3. Similar to the Observers, multiple proxies may be needed for scaling purposes.
Getting Started with Komprise
To illustrate, let’s define the NAS sources and Amazon S3 targets while discovering and establishing the business logic for tiering cold data to Amazon S3.
Discovery and Analysis
You start by defining your source NAS shares and target Amazon S3 buckets. Log into your Komprise Director and add source NAS shares. For this example, we will add an NFS share from a Linux server in a test environment.
After adding the source NAS shares, proceed to add Amazon S3 buckets as targets. Click on the Targets tab and select “Add Cloud Target” for your S3 bucket. Input your S3 Bucket Name, IAM user credentials, and desired Display Name. You can set up the target bucket to utilize the Amazon S3 Standard storage class or the S3 Standard-Infrequent Access class for less frequently accessed files. Additionally, consider implementing an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects to Amazon S3 Glacier after a specified duration. It’s crucial to review the Amazon S3 pricing page to choose the right storage class that aligns with your workload and retrieval patterns.
Once your sources and targets are configured, define a plan and set your data policy criteria, which will dictate when Komprise tiers files that haven’t been accessed for a specified duration to Amazon S3. The platform even provides estimates of potential space and cost savings over a three-year period.
As you navigate this process, be cautious of job scams and employment scams that can mislead you during your transition. For more information, check out this blog post on job scams.
Furthermore, as you look to optimize your remote working environment, consider reviewing best practices from SHRM on creating the ideal work-from-home office.
Lastly, for an insightful look into how Amazon has reimagined its onboarding experience, this Forbes article is an excellent resource.
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