Building a Next-Gen Storage Infrastructure for SaaS Applications
1. Building a Next-Gen Storage
Infrastructure for SaaS Applications
Al Perlman, Moderator, TechTarget
Josh Atwell, Developer Advocate, NetApp SolidFire
Edward Dibeler, Automated Healthcare Solutions
2. • AHCS is the leading provider of technology enabled dispensing solutions for workers compensation
providers and patients with location in 36 states including Hawaii and Alaska
• AHCS has developed a powerful, next generation claims management technology platform, called
ezDispense™ for point of care medication dispensing which is web based and can be accessed anywhere
internet is available
• The platform enables the Company to remove many of the traditional barriers associated with physician
dispensing, while virtually eliminating reimbursement risk and ensuring patients receive their medication
• The AHCS model is a guaranteed program so all our information must be accurate, secure and in real time
without interruption or delay
• Our providers require live on-demand critical life saving data like allergy and drug interaction information
as well as refill to soon and other safety information
• The AHCS platform reports to all state and government entities the dispensing information of all providers
dispensing controlled medications
What we do at AHCS
3. Storage Needs
• AHCS needed to acquire a storage solution which would allow us to give the highest SLA possible
to its providers without the need for “Maintenance Windows”
• We needed to know that our data integrity would be safe and secure
• We needed reliability with survivability under multiple failure scenarios without impact on
software delivery
• We needed to scale up in horsepower, not just storage as we grew
• Wanted to get away from controller/shelf methodology
4. Why SolidFire
• Ability to perform upgrades, expansions and patches during production hours without the need
for maintenance windows
• Distance ourselves from traditional RAID methodology with extensive rebuild times
• As nodes are added (during production hours even) we are able to add performance resources as
well as storage (IOPS)
• No single point of failure, we can lose half our stack and still remain 100% up without impact on
performance
• Ability to guarantee bandwidth at the application level
5. All-flash storage platform for the next generation data center.
Self Healing
High Availability
Fail without
operational
impacts
Complete
System Automation
Infrastructure
management
by code
In-Line Data
Reduction
Production
data sets
without cost
Scale-Out
Infrastructure Agility
Scale without
operational
impacts
Guaranteed
Quality of Service
Deploy without
operational
impacts
6. All-flash storage platform for the next generation data center.
Self Healing
High Availability
Fail without
operational
impacts
Complete
System Automation
Infrastructure
management
by code
Scale-Out
Infrastructure Agility
Scale without
operational
impacts
Guaranteed
Quality of Service
Deploy without
operational
impacts
In-Line Data
Reduction
Production
data sets
without cost
7. 35 TB
Scale-Out Infrastructure Agility
Linear Scale
of Performance and Capacity
Expand / Contract
without disruption or reconfiguration
Guaranteed Compatibility
between all SolidFire storage nodes
Future-Proof your storage investment
Eliminate storage migrations
and forklift upgrades
Never wait 3 years for an upgrade
Performance
Capacity
200,000 IOPS
43.6 TB
250,000 IOPS
52.2 TB
300,000 IOPS
60.8 TB
350,000 IOPS
8. All-flash storage platform for the next generation data center.
Self Healing
High Availability
Fail without
operational
impacts
Complete
System Automation
Infrastructure
management
by code
Scale-Out
Infrastructure Agility
Scale without
operational
impacts
Guaranteed
Quality of Service
Deploy without
operational
impacts
In-Line Data
Reduction
Production
data sets
without cost
9. SolidFire Helix™
Cluster wide RAID-less data protection
No single points of failure
Automatic self-healing –
restores redundancy after failure
Maintains all QoS settings
regardless of failure condition
Non-disruptive hardware
and software upgrades
Self Healing High Availability
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10. All-flash storage platform for the next generation data center.
Self Healing
High Availability
Fail without
operational
impacts
Complete
System Automation
Infrastructure
management
by code
Scale-Out
Infrastructure Agility
Scale without
operational
impacts
Guaranteed
Quality of Service
Deploy without
operational
impacts
In-Line Data
Reduction
Production
data sets
without cost
11. Guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS)
Dynamically Allocate, Manage
and Guarantee storage performance
independent of capacity
Define / enforce Min, Max and Burst
settings for each application / volume
SolidFire QoS Eliminates
of traditional performance
related storage problems - ESG 2015
12. In-Line Data
Reduction
Production
data sets
without cost
All-flash storage platform for the next generation data center.
Self Healing
High Availability
Fail without
operational
impacts
Complete
System Automation
Infrastructure
management
by code
Scale-Out
Infrastructure Agility
Scale without
operational
impacts
Guaranteed
Quality of Service
Deploy without
operational
impacts
Rapid Response
Increase Productivity
Managing Real time (add and subtract)
Decouple of performance and capacity – managing as a resource pool
No end of life, end of sale phenomenon that has plagued this industry for years… don’t have to think about it
ESG Lab’s analysis predicted that SolidFire automation could help lower operating expenses by as much as 67%. Because the SolidFire deployment consisted of a single system, contained no management silos, and was designed to automate the most time-consuming administrative tasks, the benefits of automation were clearly evident for nearly all of the storage tasks that were modeled.