Guest Blog by BlueThreads Rob DOria - Feet on the Ground with My Head (and BLOBs) in the Cloud
Published 06/22 courtesy of Bamboo Solutions Community
Windows Azure BLOB Storage, EMC Atmos Online, and other hosted storage platforms are changing the way we, and others, look at implementing SharePoint in companies of all sizes; the small company that wants the benefits of high availability storage, but can't afford it, or the large company that wants different storage solutions for different classifications (age, SLA, isolation level, etc.) of content but doesn't want to invest in the infrastructure and human capital to manage a multitude of platforms.
The small to medium-sized company value proposition is pretty straightforward. IT budgets are constrained, but business demands aren't. These companies need cost-effective and approachable (i.e., easily implemented) options and Cloud-based storage delivers that.
The larger company value proposition is a little harder to come by, as most large companies have the resources to implement this technology for themselves. That being said, it is often hard for departments or groups within these organizations to provision storage for their own data and content without overly complicated procurement processes and politics. I've seen projects that have clear and tangible business benefit die because storage was not and could not be made available. That's crazy, and quite frustrating if you're on the receiving end of that message.
I also see opportunities for this type of service when it comes to specialized storage requirements for certain classifications of content within organizations of any size. No company can look at all their content and develop a cost-effective, yet requirements-driven approach to storing it. You're either going cheap and risking the integrity of mission critical/sensitive content, or you're swinging hard the other way and going the expensive and highly secure route for all content. The former creates compliance, retention and discovery challenges and the latter likely breaks the bank. The right approach is to have different storage solutions for different classifications of content, whether that endpoint be a SAN sitting in my data center or a storage location in the Cloud. You have options.
Our solution, StoragePoint, enables all of this in a couple ways. First and foremost, it separates (externalizes) the content BLOBs from the SharePoint Content Database. Free from the database, the BLOBs can sit on a local SAN or float up into the Cloud, compressed, encrypted or both. They can be partitioned by SLA, isolation requirements, retention policies, or any other distinguishable set of characteristics. The product ships with a generic File System (i.e., Local, Domain, Network, and CIFS Share) Adapter, but adapters for other storage platforms (i.e., EMC Centera and Hitachi HCAP) are available. We've also built a StoragePoint adapter for Windows Azure BLOB Storage and are in the process of building one for EMC Atmos Online (stay tuned). I'd like to give a shout-out to Shad Philips at the Dallas MTC as the inspiration behind the Azure adapter. We were working on a StoragePoint POC with him last month and he just kind of matter-of-factly threw out, "you guys outta build a Azure BLOB Storage adapter for this". So we did (NOTE: As a group, we're not always this agreeable and accommodating). Thanks Shad! We're adapter crazy right now, so feel free to e-mail me if you have an idea for another one.
We're also talking to companies that host SharePoint in the Cloud and want to go the other way with the content...back down to the client's local storage platform or ship it off to another Cloud. We'll have a post on the concepts, opportunities, and benefits of this in the near future.
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