Transcript
Hi Mike Matchett with Small World Big Data and we are here talking with StorPool today about block storage now StorPools been around for a while they do software defined storage solutions for all sorts of things. It's a really great solution to dive into some of that a little bit. Uh, but what they're doing today is coming out with an announcement about supporting Oracle virtualization and being a key part of of a solution that can help you get off a VMware and get somewhere much more stable more open source space and I think much more functional so hold on a second and we'll bring StorPool in. Hey, Alex. ¿How you doing today? Hey, Mike. I'm doing great. How are you? Oh, good, good. Um, I guess for for you know. We've talked to you guys before There's some other clips people can go what if they're curious about StorPool, but just at the highest level. ¿Can you just tell us? Tell the audience here. What StorPool is all about. So what is all about providing a software that converts standard servers into ultra fast forward systems. We have proven measures of performance of the system of under one hundred microseconds so that's cero point. Uno milliseconds of latency and uh is extremely extremely fast. It's also extremely highly available uh, measured across the whole of store systems around the world. It provides five nights of availability. Uh, so this isn't something we calculated on the spreadsheet. ¿It's actually what we see in production around the world and finally something we are able to do because of the way stopper is designed as a software is we can run it on the same servers where virtual machines are running in so in parallel with them in a hiperconvergente infrastructure Which is what we're going to be talking about today? Yeah, I think a lot of people are excited still excited by that concept. We've been covering it for a long time and over over the years. They have been a lot of software defined storage solutions, but a lot of them have come and gone. You guys definitely have some some capabilities there that that customers love and keep keep going and keep adopting and widening. And of course the the landscape. Here is that Broadcom both VMware and a lot of people are unhappy with What's going on there and are looking for a way to exit exit their deals or find something different or whatever. Uh, so the fact that you guys can be used in an hci solution. Um as an alternative to VMware is really interesting. I think going to find interesting to other people. So just tell us how to high level. ¿Uh, uh, you know what? What does that look like to use StorPool in Oracle Virtualization. What's sort of the conceptual idea there. The conceptual idea is that you have a concept called the managed block driver in virtualization and that allows you to use a storage in in in an automated manner so each virtual machine virtual disk gets its own dedicated volume and, over time you can create many many virtual machines think thousands of virtual machines in the storage system and you can create a snapshots. You can do other kinds of data management like backup and D.R. workflows to remote sites with these uh with functionalities at the storage instead of higher level functionalities of the stack. Um, and what we did is we introduced, uh, a simple dispatcher service that kind of enhances the managed block storage driver. Uh, capability. So you can use these lightweight storage drivers the first of which which is a StorPool. Uh with a virtualization and these drivers are basically um, giving you complete control of the storage system from the Oracle Virtualization interfaces. So you never have to worry about going into a into the system and during any kind of manual intervention. With that if they're going back to what they might think of as a storage array situation they've now have to have storage administrators and bring those back online, but they have gotten you don't want to do that for like vCenter. They don't want to do that right. So they want the storage to fold in underneath. But I think I think this is also just to point out to folks one of the things if you're whiteboarding this in your mind. Is that StorPool isn't just going to be an hci component in the organization stack, but you can obviously use StorPool for a lot of many use cases and then it all interlinks and you know pools your storage. So there's a lot of capability there were not going to dive into it too much today. So let's go back to the VMware. The VMware use problem here. Just just quickly. Uh, and from your perspective we are VMware users really looking for something different than vsan are looking something different than VMware. What's really making them want to get out of get out of that world. It's very simple Mike, when you think about it. The world is really changed in the last three years in many cases customers prices have been raked up by up to the times compared to before. Uh, there's been a shift to au pair care licensing model with minimum commits and this. Uh, uh, to these changes together with the price raises are actually creating a trust problem. Uh, because people are worried. Uh, okay, prices have been raised, but maybe there'll be raised again in here in another year and so on. And this is something that people want to get away from at the same time when when they look at the alternatives. There is. Uh, uh. There is a demand. Uh, for something that has some of the capabilities of of VMware. Um, uh, but not, but clearly not all because VMware has just had such a long time on the market to build out a solution. Uh, they want something that has a fair pricing with lower lock and they want a solid vendor who want be bought out or go down because of an unprofitable business model and they want an integrated offering where the operating system. Hypervisor software defined storage software defined networking are fully integrated fully supported and production proven over many years. Uh, which, uh, um. ¿What basically this is what? Oracle Storage together with Oracle virtualization brings to the table. Diplomatic alyx because you're not naming names here, but we're saying a lot of the other alternatives are to VMware. Just don't make the grade because they they can't either provide all the functionality you're sacrificing something. Uh, the vendors aren't really reliable. I mean, Oracle is not going anywhere. We know this right. This is this is something. Yeah. That's going to be there. So you want to move from one reputable vendor name to another, but the reputable the largest vendors. They're just don't have adequate offerings to get out of here. So that's that's interesting. So let's talk a little bit. Just quickly about. Uh, you know StorPool itself with with Oracle Virtualization. So just to recap. I can I can fold StorPool in to the Oracle Virtualization stack as the software defined storage layer and come up with something. That's highly functional. Uh, I guess I guess it wasn't Oracle ad storage in there is Oracle looking at StorPool now. Um, first of you. That's exactly what we're doing. Thank you for summarizing it. So well, and, uh, like when you look at the Oracle Virtualization Ecosystem in the past. Um, it had certain, uh, options available. But there are no longer there. Uh, so there was the sender lib project which basically allowed to allowed users to use the single drivers developed for other cloud management platforms namely OpenStack. Um and but but that's deprecated and no longer supported in overt or or virtualization. Um, you had um glusterfs which was used as the solution is something to build out an hci solution and its end of life is December. Twenty twenty four. Um, and you had in the past set which doesn't really work for transactional databases and other latency bound workloads. Uh, but it's been, uh, excluded starting from Oracle Linux eight and later. So so it's not even present in the Oracle Linux distribution and therefore not an option anymore. Right so some some changes in the underlying uh, available technologies some locations and suddenly uh, there's this opportunity for people to take and Deploy the Oracle virtualization stack which is a really nice solution for virtualization if you haven't looked at it with the StorPool software defined storage layer and come up with something really complete and in fact more capable than most software defined storage solutions that we've seen in the market as we've talked about before you guys have rock solid reliability mentioned this sub under millisecond response for block storage in a VMware environment which is awesome and environment Um and just this idea that Uh uh, it's scalable right. I can scale Um, StorPool. Uh, how big can I scale StorPool. Alex, I was going to make something up. But, um. So you can scale start to about four thousand servers. Okay. Um. ¿Which is a pretty big environment? ¿Yeah, Which is really great? And of course part of the multiple use cases. I mentioned earlier are that you're not necessarily limited to doing HCI then with StorPool, obviously, Uh, this can be something that grows into the larger organization with a lot of use cases as people understand the benefits of doing something in the software defined way, which is which is pretty awesome. Um, and we don't have time to talk about this, Alex. But I know there's some some interest in how you guys handled disaster recovery and and multiple sites and you've got some solutions for that as well that that you know other storage solutions might not have it's all baked in on there. Uh, that's right. But I think one of the things that I like you know. Just looking at this is saying. Hey, it's block storage in a environment and you guys support DKIM clones and snaps per disk and snaps per consistent sets and some other stuff that really makes it easy to manage larger and larger VM environments particularly those running Oracle databases. We haven't you really talked about the database side of things, but that's really the motivation here is you've got some very large Commercial Enterprise VMware deployments running serious applications and they need rock solid storage layer. So this is great to see. Um, so if someone wants to get a little bit more information about this, Alex. If they want to look in the StorPool as an hci component of this Oracle Virtualization Stack as Oracle Virtualization. ¿What would you have them? ¿Look at where they start differently? They can start on our website. They can go to store dot com slash storage for him and they will find all the information about the software virtualization integration. Okay, because this is because it's kind of a new thing and people are going to be interested in this. I think especially it continues this wave of people trying to exit VMware continues to to to flow. Uh, and I think boing boing a really great alternative for other for people to look at What's going to get you a lot more attention going forward too. So, Thank you for being here today, Alex. Thank you for having me, Mike. All right. Check out StorPool folks, if you haven't already take care.
