Data mobility is one of the most critical aspects of managing data in a modern, multicloud, and co-location environment. Data replication must be viewed from a mobility perspective. Providing replication to a homogenous platform and replicating across heterogeneous platforms unlocks the value of data.

Described by the term “data capital” in the MIT Technology Review, data is an organization’s most valuable asset. Today’s organizations must be able to replicate data across platforms. Therefore, data replication cannot be confined to PowerScale clusters but must also include cloud targets.

To address the requirements of the modern enterprise, PowerScale introduced SmartSync. This feature replicates file-to-file data between PowerScale clusters. SmartSync cloud copy replicates file-to-object data from PowerScale clusters to Dell ECS and cloud providers. Having multiple target destinations allows administrators to store multiple copies of a dataset across locations, providing further disaster recovery (DR) readiness.

Figure 1.   Cross-platform data mobility

SmartSync is designed to address the growing needs of data beyond the data center by using a powerful transport layer with robust error handling that uses a proprietary messaging system through RPC. Cloud copy uses HTTP to replicate data to cloud providers.