Azure StorSimple (Day 27 of 31)

List of all posts from this series: http://vunvulearadu.blogspot.ro/2014/11/azure-blog-post-marathon-is-ready-to.html

Short Description 
Azure Stor Simple it is a hybrid cloud storage solution based on Microsoft Azure and StorSimple. It is based on a property device that offer an overview view over all storages (on-premises and cloud).

Main Features 
Lower storage cost
This solution is powerful enough to allocate storage only when is needed, based on company and system requirements.
Compression
To reduce the necessary space, content can be compresses. In this way the space used to store data is reduces drastically.
Deduplication
In enterprise, all the data is versioned. Because of this the size of the storage can increase drastically. StorSimple is smart enough to detect data duplication between different versions of the same data. In this way the size of the storage is decrease drastically.
Integration with MMC (Microsoft Management Console) and iSCSI
It is fully integrated with different management applications and APIs like MMC.
Same interface for different storage environment
All storage environments, from on-premises, to remote servers and clouds one can be managed using only one interface and management console. In this way the storage administration becomes a simple think.
Automatically backups
Azure Stor Simple it is smart enough to create backups based on predefined rules.
Disaster Recovery
One of the most important feature is disaster recovery, that is trigger automatically by the system. Different rules and policies can be configured.
SharePoint Adapter
StorSimple contains a special adapter that can be used to manage the storage used by a SharePoint farm. All the configuration can be made directly from SharePoint administration portal.
Security
Access to all the content can be managed and controlled. In this way we can control who access the data and what kind of operations can be done over it.

Limitations 
Like any other system, Azure Stor Simple has some limitations, like:

• Maxim size of a volume is 64TB
• Maxim number of iSCSI connections is 512
• Maximum number of snapshots per devices 10K
• Restore time processing time per TB is ~5 minutes
• Maximum number of volumes is 256

Applicable Use Cases 
Below you can find some uses cases when I would use Azure Stor Simple
Pharma and Life Care 
Because of the laws, all the pharma and life care companies needs to store their audit data for 5+ year more (each country has different laws). Because of this, they need a mechanism to store large amount of data not only in a secure and reliable way, but also in way to reduce costs. For use cases like this Azure Stor Simple can be a great options, especially because of compressing and deduplication functionality.
Disaster recovery 
There are different businesses where you data needs to be available all the time. For uses cases like this you need a system that is able to trigger a disaster recovery plan automatically. For example in car industry, where you need different documentation and manuals to be accessible all the time.

Code Sample 
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Pros and Cons 
Pros

• Scalable
• Hybrid
• Secure
• It is a Stor Simple solution, not only Azure
• Has support for standards protocols

Cons
Some people could see the Stor Simple hardware device like a dependency. But in this industry it is normal to have hardware devices that can manage large amount of data and storages types.

Pricing 
When you want to calculate the cost of Azure StorSimple you should take into account:

• Storage size on cloud
• Storage size on-premises
• Ingest level
• Annual subscriptions 

Conclusion
This hybrid storage solution can be very tempting for enterprise customers that need to manage and administrate a lot of data. In theory you can reduce the cost of storage with even with 60%.