The document presents findings from a study by the Enterprise Strategy Group on the growth of cloud computing and its impact on IT spending. It highlights how organizations are increasingly adopting cloud services, particularly for secondary storage workloads, while also addressing concerns about data security and vendor lock-in. Additionally, the document discusses the validation of Avere's VFXT solution for enhancing cloud storage performance and cost-effectiveness.

1. Enterprise Strategy Group | Getting to the bigger truth.™
© 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Scott Sinclair, Storage Analyst
Bernie Behn, Principal Engineer, Avere Systems
Cloud Computing Gets
Put to the Test
PREPARED BY ESG FOR

2. Today’s Speakers
Scott Sinclair
Storage Analyst
ESG
Bernie Behn
Principal Engineer
Avere Systems

3. Housekeeping
• Recording
• Available on-demand approximately 5 minutes after
today’s presentation
• Resources
• Complete Lab Report
• Links
• Questions
• Please rate this webinar

4. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Agenda
Review ESG research on growth factors driving cloud
Review ESG’s Lab Findings on Avere vFXT
Open Up to Questions

5. About ESG
• ESG is an IT analyst, research, and strategy company.
• Our firm was founded in 1999 with headquarters in Milford, MA / an analyst and client relations presence in
Silicon Valley, CA.
• ESG conducts research with and for IT vendors, IT professionals, business professionals, and channel partners.
• We maintain ongoing analyst coverage in cloud computing, networking, storage, data protection, cybersecurity,
data management and analytics, application development and deployment, enterprise mobility, and channels.
• Capabilities include: Analyst services, market research, technical performance testing, economic validation,
consulting, and custom content.

6. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Overview
With cloud computing being a top technology area of increased
spending, many enterprises are validating cloud compute resources
for the promise of cost savings, efficiency, and dependability.
Organizations that rely on compute-intensive operations such as
media, financial analysis, and scientific research, find the ability to
quickly scale compute resources up and down as well as create off-
site archives invaluable to operational advancement.

7. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
ESG Research Overview
2014 Next Generation Storage Trends
• 25 in-depth interviews with IT professionals responsible for their
organization’s long-term IT infrastructure planning and strategy,
especially storage
2015 IT Spending Intentions Survey
• Quantitative study of 601 IT decision makers
• 65% senior IT management (C-, VP-, and director-level) and 35% IT
management
2015 Storage Trends Study
• Quantitative study of 373 IT professionals responsible for evaluating,
purchasing, and managing data storage technology – including external
disk-based storage systems – for their organization

8. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Overview of Cloud Research Findings
Cloud computing services lead IT spending growth
expectations
Use cases for cloud led by secondary storage
workloads
Cloud storage dominates initiatives that will impact
storage spend

9. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
47%
48%
50%
50%
53%
59%
60%
61%
61%
61%
66%
41%
43%
42%
43%
39%
32%
33%
31%
29%
34%
24%
12%
9%
8%
7%
8%
9%
7%
9%
10%
5%
10%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Server infrastructure (N=355)
Information management software (N=183)
Business applications, middleware, etc. (N=262)
Databases (N=282)
Network infrastructure (N=323)
Information security (N=311)
Business intelligence, analytics, and/or big data (N=175)
Storage infrastructure (N=320)
Virtualization/private cloud infrastructure software (N=195)
Enterprise mobility (N=152)
Cloud computing services (N=308)
To the best of your knowledge, to what extent will your organization’s 2015 IT spending for each technology
listed below change relative to 2014? (Percent of respondents)
2015 spending will increase 2015 spending will stay flat 2015 spending will decrease
2014-2015 Spending Change, by Technology
Data
Insights
For the fourth year in
a row, more
organizations will
increase spending on
cloud than on any
other area of
technology.

10. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
25%
25%
27%
27%
30%
31%
32%
34%
35%
38%
49%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Additional resource to accommodate spikes in workload
Application bursting
Run internal production applications
Use as temporary compute resources for time-limited projects
Business intelligence/analytics
Use for high performance and/or scientific computing applications
Run internally/externally-facing Web servers
Primary storage for files
Disaster recovery
Test and development
Data backup and archive
For which of the following purposes does/did your organization use cloud infrastructure services? (Percent of
respondents, N=327, multiple responses accepted)
Cloud Infrastructure Use Cases
Data Insights
38% of companies that are less than 10
years old say they use cloud
infrastructure for BI/analytics, making it
the third-most-common use case for
these companies.

11. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
IT Initiatives That Will Impact Storage Spending
Over the Next 12 Months
14%
14%
15%
15%
16%
17%
17%
19%
20%
20%
20%
21%
21%
23%
24%
25%
37%
Increasing applications delivered via software-as-a-service (SaaS) model
Deploying application- or workload-specific systems/appliances
Deploying converged/hyper-converged infrastructure solution
File sharing/transfer with remote offices
Collaboration tools and initiatives
“Green” initiatives to reduce data center power and cooling requirements
Regulatory compliance initiatives
Business continuity/disaster recovery programs
Major application deployments or upgrades
Internet of Things (IoT)
Supporting mobile and remote users
Database implementation/upgrade/migration
Business intelligence / data analytics
Desktop virtualization/thin client initiative (e.g., VDI)
Supporting server virtualization/private cloud implementation(s)
Data center consolidation
Using “cloud storage” service as way to source storage capacity without buying new on-…

12. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Insights from IT Leader Discussions on Cloud1
Vendor lock-in and data security were commonly
mentioned concerns
Lack of insight into file storage added complexities to
which workloads could be migrated to the cloud
Cloud pricing complexity created challenges to anticipate
which workloads would benefit from cloud storage
Despite the high interest in cloud, IT leaders still have concerns
1 From 2014 Next Generation Storage Architectures research study

13. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
"Cloud allows the community to access top of the line technology in a fast manner”
“Certain data types will never go to the cloud”
"As a bank, we are waiting for the first few banks to move to the cloud and see how the
regulators react…after that there could be a tidal wave to the cloud”
“We don’t feel its mature enough, the last thing we would want is for the company to
end up in the news due to a hack or a data leak”
“Once they’ve got you, they’ve got you"
Cloud Storage: Quotes

14. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
"All our employees have to sign an NDA, and I’m not sure if they could require the cloud
company to do the same”
"When you walk through our doors here, you fall under our controls. We need to know
who is using what, where and when. As soon as we lose track of that, everyone asks, can
we withstand an audit?”
"On premises is always cheaper however we have modeled it”
"To be successful in any cloud undertaking you need to bring in a trusted partner to help
you pick the provider”
Cloud Storage: Quotes Continued

15. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
ESG Lab: Hands-On Validation Testing of Avere vFXT
Validate whether a product works
as advertised and explain both the technical
and business benefits.
Validate performance, scalability, usability,
agility, efficiency, etc…
Why This Matters
More than 600 ESG Lab Reports

16. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
ESG Lab Hands-On Validation of Avere vFXT Solution
Simple Cloud Deployment.
Flexibility to access data between cloud and on-
premises without disruption to existing workflows.
Agility to automate movement of data to the right
place, at the right time.
Cost Effectiveness of Avere vFXT in the Cloud.

17. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
About the ESG Lab Test
• To substantiate the time and cost savings as well as degree of
operational impact of deploying Avere Virtual FXT (vFXT) Edge filers
into cloud computing workflows.
• The Avere vFXT Edge Filer enables NAS file-services in the Cloud,
connecting on-premises storage to cloud computing resources.
• Google Cloud Platform: Google Compute Engine and Google Cloud
Storage selected for testing environment

18. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
ESG Lab Test: Why Are Cloud File-Services Needed?
• Moving application stacks from on-premises into the compute cloud is generally
straightforward – keeping the applications saturated with I/O is challenging
• Applications that have historically run on-premises against file-based storage will
require the same interface when running at-scale in the cloud
• Running applications in the cloud directly over dedicated private links will affect
application performance due to network latency and bandwidth limitations
• Forklifting entire datasets into cloud-storage-based file services may not be
feasible for “short bursts of compute activity”

19. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Cloud Compute and Storage Resource Lifecycles
• Cloud bursting applications utilize two components:
– Permanent Infrastructure: On-Premises Storage
• User content remains stored on-premises customer-owned NAS
• Computational processing takes place in Google Compute Engine
– Temporary/Transient Infrastructure: Google Cloud Project
• VPN between Google Cloud Project and on-premises network
• Google Compute Engine
– n1-highmem-8 compute instances with persistent SSD disks for vFXT caching
– Linux instances running applications with mount points to vFXT
• Born-in-cloud Applications
– Permanent Infrastructure: Google Cloud Project
• Google Compute Engine
– Application and file-services are active cloud compute instances
– Can be powered on/off on-demand in response to application needs
• Google Cloud Storage
– Object-based cloud storage bucket where at-rest encrypted data resides

20. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Overall Cloud Bursting Architecture
• Permanent on-premises and transient in-cloud infrastructure
• Compute project can be spun-up and torn-down on-demand
• Key benefits:
– Data resides permanently on-premises
– Cloud infrastructure is completely elastic/on-demand

21. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Straightforward Deployment via API Commands
• gcloud API
– gcloud compute instances create <vFXT deployment orchestration>
• Avere API:
– corefiler.add <IP address of on-premises filer>
– vserver.createJunction <add on-premises export for in-cloud access>
• Client Compute Instances:
– gcloud compute instances create <compute node deployment>
– NFS-Mount client compute instances to vFXT file-services IP addresses
• GO!
– Further scale the Avere vFXT cluster and application compute farm via API calls

22. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Cloud Bursting Application Performance
• Google Compute Engine clients run the workload against application data from on-premises
• Clustered file system cache of on-premises filer is running inside of Google Compute Engine
• Cloud-scale compute demands scalable file-services performance: Avere vFXT Cluster
• On-Premises to Cloud network connectivity bottleneck is relieved by file caching
• Workload results are cached and acknowledged in the cloud and streamed back on-premises

23. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Cloud bursting Cost Analysis
• Supercomputer capabilities built on-demand, pay-as-you-go
• Run applications that were historically run on-premises without modifications
• Quick spin-up and spin-down of application instances
• Cloud architects can focus on running large-scale apps, not data management

24. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Map/Reduce Analytics
• Cloud-based workflows can deposit file data directly on vFXT Edge Filer
• Source data generation and gathering can happen without HDFS
• Map/Reduce jobs can access data directly with shared storage NFS mount points
• Hadoop grid accrues compute charges only when running analytic workloads

25. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Hadoop Environment Setup
• Google “bdutil” deployment script builds Hadoop cluster on-demand
• Set up NFS mount points to vFXT on each Hadoop worker
• Update the “mapred_site.xml” and “core-site.xml” files to use mount points
• Source data is already collected, in-place, and available on the Avere vFXT
• Dispatch map-reduce jobs in typical fashion against paths served by Avere
hadoop jar <jar file> <job routine> /avere/data/input/ /avere/data/output
• Output data is placed directly on shared storage for post-consumption
• Removed the need for copy-in and copy-out of map-reduce data

26. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Running Distributed Map-Reduce Jobs
• Online archive of file data stored in Google Cloud Storage
• Recently written data is handled by vFXT, in-cache
• More efficient map-reduce runs against in-cache data
• Multiple jobs in parallel maximized data throughput
• Hadoop cluster can be powered-off or torn down when jobs
are not actively being dispatched
• Data is always available when vFXT cluster is powered on

27. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Hadoop Analytics Cloud Costs
• Scale map-reduce worker-node independently from storage performance
• Less cost overhead when compared to HDFS backed by persistent disk
• Minimize application compatibility by writing to file storage instead of object
• Skip data ingest and export for streamlined hadoop job execution

28. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Conclusions
• Simplify cloud computing usage with file-based access solutions
• Overcome “data inertia” without moving data
• Increased agility to minimize costs of cloud overhead
• Trivialize network bottlenecks between on-premises and cloud infrastructures
• Agile permanent or transient usage of cloud computing/storage resources
• Minimize full-copy data movement with Edge filer caching
• Move entire workflows into the cloud without re-writing applications

29. © 2015 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Thank You
Enterprise Strategy Group | Getting to the bigger truth.™
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Scott Sinclair, Storage Analyst
Scott.Sinclair@esg-global.com
@Scott_Sin
Bernie Behn, Principal Engineer
bbehn@averesystems.com
Avere Systems
Visit: AvereSystems.com
@Averesystems