Introduction

Audience

This document is intended for Zadara Private Cloud administrators and assumes access permissions for the Cloud management applications.

Zadara Storage Command Center

Overview

Zadara Storage Cloud was architectured from the ground up to build the first “Enterprise-Storage-as-a-Service Data Storage System for the Cloud” with the following key targets:

  • Enterprise quality, resilient, highly available, consistent performance storage for the most demanding data center application workloads

  • Consumed as a Service - flexible, dynamic and billable

  • Scale out - grow to hundreds of Storage Nodes, thousands of drives and multi-Petabyte Storage

  • True Multi-tenancy - End-user controlled privacy and security. Separate workloads, resource allocation, and management per tenant, such that each tenant truly experiences “no noisy neighbors” secure storage.

  • Universal Storage - Supports all data services on one common infrastructure: Block, File, Object

Zadara Command Center is a centralized point of management and monitoring for the Zadara Storage Cloud. Command Center enables Administrators to:

  • Extract detailed information regarding cloud elements such as : VPSA instances , Storage Nodes , disk drives and software images

  • Define global cloud level polices that impact all underlying tenants

  • Monitor cloud resources utilization and health from a single pane of glass

  • Maintain cloud infrastructure and control software images available for tenants

  • Perform management and maintenance operations on Virtual Private Storage Array instances defined on the cloud

  • Manage cloud expansions - adding storage nodes and disk drives

  • Manage cloud roles and users

  • Manage cloud level license-keys

  • View a detailed central log of all cloud elements

Terminology

Item

Description

SN

Storage Node.

Commodity server with a large number of CPU cores (typically 16 or more ) and large RAM (typically 64GB or more), connected to a 40GbE/100GbE data network with Intel/NVIDIA SRIOV NICs and 1Gb management network

VPSA

Virtual Private Storage Array.

A redundant and Highly Available Software Defined Storage (SDS) that has all resources (CPU, memory, network, disks) provisioned entirely for itself, thereby providing consistent QoS storage

Object Storage

Redundant, Durable, Private and Highly Available virtual object store cluster that has provisioned resources (CPU, memory, network, disks)

VC

Virtual Controller.

A Virtual Machine running Zadara Storage IO stack. Two VC’s are paired together in High-Availability configuration to form a VPSA.

Provisioning Portal (eCommerce)

The web application portal for the end-users to create VPSA’s/ Object Storage and provisioning their resources (Drives, IO Engines, Flash Cache etc). Pricing and Billing are also managed via the Provisioning Portal.

Cloud Controller (CC)

Set of software components that manages the storage cloud (like allocating resources for VPSA/Object Storage with intelligent scheduler, monitoring, and provisioning networking/storage for VPSA/Object Storage etc.)

Command Center

The Web Application for the Cloud Administrator to monitor and maintain the Zadara Cloud (inventory management, maintenance operations etc.)

CCVM

A system Virtual Machine within the Zadara Cloud which runs the Command Center and the Provisioning Portal

FE Network/Data Network

Front-End network.

40GbE/100GbE network through which Application Servers can connect to Zadara VPSA Storage for IO and Control

BE Network

Back-End network.

40GbE/100GbE network through which SNs and VPSA interconnect for data IOs

Management Network

Internal 1Gb network for management operations of VPSA, VPSA Object Storage & SN

SRIOV

Single Root IO Virtualization.

A networking standard by which a physical adapter is logically provisioned for different VMs, bypassing the Hypervisor

Application Server

A server or a Virtual Machine in the Compute Cloud which consumes VPSA iSCSI Block Volume or NAS shares

Tenant

Each end-user that accesses Zadara Storage Cloud.

Note: Each end-user can have multiple users or logins belonging to the same tenant

QoS

Quality of Service.

Performance and reliability characteristics of a service