Elastic Block Storage - Nuts & Bolts vs 3Rs

Honestly, could the screws to mount a hard drive be any smaller ?

That single question reminds most IT professionals of hours on end going nuts trying to bolt and cable hard drives into servers and RAID arrays. Our reward was the blinking lights; at least until we ran out of disk space.

Enter the good old 3Rs. Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. Instead of a screwdriver, you can provision volumes with your keyboard and Amazon's Elastic Block Storage (EBS). The following example shuffles the 3Rs a bit to make a point.

Step 1 - aRithmetic
Add up the space to backup all of your systems at all of your sites:
This example uses 800GB so you can keep a year of snapshots.

Step 2 - wRiting
Type in this command:
$ ec2-create-volume --size 800

Step 3 - Reading
You will see:
VOLUME vol-4d826724 858993459200 creating 2008-02-14T00:00:00+0000

Then a few moments after that:
VOLUME vol-4d826724 858993459200 available 2008-02-14T00:00:00+0000

And that is the 3Rs method to provision highly available data storage on a virtual server in a completely private account that is up to 10 times more reliable than a typical hard disk.

To delete the volume:
$ ec2-delete-volume vol-4d826724

Of course there's more to it than just the volume, but the steps covered here are the equivalent of buying, shipping, unpacking, inserting, securing, rack mounting, powering, cooling, and securing a bunch of disk drives. The last command is the equivalent of undoing it all.

For WarLock Software and our resellers the process is so easy and risk free that we can always include a free turn-key cloud computing installation with our DR+ product.

Looks like the 3Rs are going to make a comeback. Big time.

Elastic Block Storage is Perfect for Online Backup

With today's delivery of Elastic Block Storage (EBS) in the Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), Amazon removes the last possible objection to transforming cloud computing into the ideal resource for online backup. Now that persistent storage with 10 times the reliability of standard disk is available for 10 cents a month per gigabyte it makes perfect sense to start moving backup data into the cloud. This is particularly true for Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

Beyond the technical merits however (which will be addressed in later blogs) the MOST IMPORTANT thing about the EC2/EBS online backup model is DATA OWNERSHIP. When you set up an account with Amazon Web Services (AWS) you have complete control and there is NO THIRD PARTY GATEKEEPER between you and your data. You, and/or your trusted service provider, can do what you want when you want.

Which brings us to the second most important thing; NO LONG TERM CONTRACTS that lock in a mandatory expense that must be satisfied to avoid penalties. As your organization's needs change you can either expand, or shrink, or stop altogether with zero consequences. Imagine leasing your car and being able to turn it in on a whim... and then get it, or a different one, back two months later all the while paying only for the miles you drive.

Finally, even as this new capability dramatically reduces the upfront cost and ongoing risk for customers and vendors alike, it makes sense to leverage technology to keep the pay as you go costs to a minimum. For online backup, WarLock DR offers their Data Relay function which supports near Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for terrestrial physical systems and virtual machines all day long with integrated store and forward after business hours into EC2/EBS.

So be sure to check out Amazon's new Elastic Block Storage (EBS) along with WarLock DR+ for the best value in Tier 1 online backup.

SMB MSPs Recover Margin & Account Control

Managed Services Providers (MSPs) offering online backup for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity to their Small & Medium Business (SMB) customers now have an option to the prevailing practice of reselling services from industry heavyweights.

With the arrival of Elastic Block Storage (EBS) in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) the up front cost for the data center assets to deliver an offsite storage capability have been reduced to zero. This means that MSPs in the space will be able to offer their customers equivalent data integrity while reclaiming 100% of margin and account control. This last issue looms large for many MSPs because they have seen their influence erode over time as their customers default to communicating directly with the provider. The theory is that the MSP "owns" the customer but the reality is that they are often reduced to bystander status.

There are two major costs for such an "indirect" relationship with the customer. The first is obvious; the upstream provider typically consumes the lion's share of the margin. The second is less apparent and goes by many names. For this discussion, we will use the term "opportunity cost" because every customer conversation not held means the opportunity is lost to understand what their objectives are, not just for data protection, but for their business objectives.

This is of critical importance as system and storage virtualization shift the preferred data replication methodologies from block to file and accelerate the ability and the desire of SMB customer to do lots more than just backup data. Tools like WarLock DR+ offer SMBs the chance to proactively aggregate and distribute data files to improve not just survivability but also their operational efficiency. Many of these conversations are now being held for the first time and MSPs should strive to be in them all.

Sure EC2 and EBS fullfill the promise of hardware as a service (HaaS) but as with all new technologies they require active participation and delivery. Fortunately the rewards of delivering the message are crystal clear and once again profitable.

Independence from Single Vendor Ecosystems

A lot of things have changed in the technology marketplace. One constant however has been the strategic value of locking customers into an ecosystem because they come to a point where they can't afford to switch. This may finally be changing with cloud computing, open source, and virtualization on the rise. Basically, people are starting to use so many different tools from so many different sources as they venture out on to the web that they are growing comfortable with not having a complete ecosystem from a single vendor.

As the reader may know, offsite and online data replication (DR) is a big focus here at WarLock Software and we believe our DR+ solution is an excellent tool to gain ecosystem independence in three ways:

1. WarLock Software's DR+ solution runs on anything and backs up everything. This strikes a blow to the ecosystem argument that data must be moved into a proprietary storage device.


2. Real opportunities for improving operations flow from flexible replication that can read from and write to many disparate sources including in our case, Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) with persistent storage.


3. A lot of work is being done with a combination of tools on the desktop, the web, and the intranet and replicating these pockets of information is beyond a typical storage ecosystem.

Finally, VMWare and Hyper-V are bursting single vendor ecosystems apart at the seams because they are so cost effective and flexible, especially for business continuity and disaster recovery. We're hoping all of these factors together may finally make it "affordable" to move away from vendor ecosystem lock in.