All Flash Object Storage: Dell EMC ECS EXF900 Appliances Support New Workloads with Outstanding Performance
Fri, 24 Sep 2021 13:34:58 -0000
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The data storage industry has three distinct pillars: block, file, and object. Traditionally, object storage has been leveraged for backup, long term archive, and data lake storage. It has been regarded as “cheap and deep”, but that perception is beginning to change as more and more application workloads suited to object storage are evolving.
With the introduction of flash-based storage systems, object is now capable of handling high performance workloads at low latencies. Object use cases are expanding into other workloads such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deep Learning (DL), Machine Learning (ML), and DevOps. These analytical applications produce a wide range of data types and sizes. With object storage supporting unlimited fully customizable metadata, these features make it easier to locate data for use in AI and ML algorithms, offering enhanced insight for our customers.
Exponential data growth in recent years presents economic challenges to companies. The scalable architecture of object storage means it’s well suited to handle data growth, allowing customers to add additional nodes when required.
Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS), Dell EMC’s object storage system, is capable of scaling linearly based on capacity and performance. With flash-based storage, object is a viable alternative for addressing different business needs. Additionally, with the cost of flash storage falling and price points coming close to those of HDDs, the cost difference between the two technologies is narrowing. Customers can leverage higher performance and cost-effective object storage to gain the necessary insight from their data by using AI and ML to extract the intelligence they require to make strategic business decisions.
Over time, the S3 API has become the defacto standard for object storage. S3 allows for sharing of code, software, and tools -- which fits perfectly into the agile development world of DevOps. Having robust APIs is critical, because it allows customers to leverage automation and orchestration methods to respond quickly as required. Object storage APIs that are application and cloud centric allow you to deploy applications rapidly through code and processes. In certain industry verticals such as medical, financial, media, or automotive, flash object can be leveraged for research, financial modeling, streaming services, or CAD use cases. These are ideal for the type of applications that use massive data sets and high performing environments.
In November 2020, we launched our flash object appliance: the Dell EMC EXF900. It is built with NVMe-based SSDs on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, and leverages the NVMeOF (non-volatile memory express over fabrics) protocol for its backend network. This enables node-to-node communication and unlocks the true potential of the all-flash system’s throughput rate, especially in large scale deployments.
With that, we are seeing incredible performance improvements in terms of bandwidth and transactions per second (TPS) when comparing the EXF900 to previous appliance releases.
We believe the EXF900, with its enterprise performance levels, is perfectly suited to serve the changing workload needs of our customers. The modern data center is evolving and so are the workloads our customers are running on our systems. With its high performance and ability to automate easily, the EXF900 can deliver the scalability and agility they need.
This significant combination of performance and security features ensures that ECS can support customers’ data-intensive workload requirements while protecting data from malicious activities.
Authors:
Finbarr O’Riordan @finbarrorcork on Twitter
Christoffer Braendstrup
Related Blog Posts
Protect Against Potential Ransomware Attacks on Object Storage
Wed, 06 Oct 2021 13:23:05 -0000
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Ransomware is defined as a form of malware that encrypts a victim’s files. The attacker will then demand a ransom from the victim and will only restore access after a payment has been made. These attackers are unscrupulous, always looking for opportunities to exploit weaknesses in potential victim’s defences.
In the VMware 2020 Cybersecurity Outlook Report, defence evasion is a key tool for these attackers. So having the right protection in place is paramount. Here are some highlights:
A wiper attack involves wiping/overwriting/removing data from the victim. Unlike typical cyber-attacks that tend to be for monetary gain, wiper attacks are destructive in nature and often do not involve a ransom. Wiper malware can however be used to cover the tracks of a separate data theft.
Object storage can be regarded as a potential weak point in an organization’s armour. There are some key considerations about object storage that you need to be aware of when putting a security plan in place:
- Object storage platforms typically have no security monitoring tools to make you aware that your data is under threat.
- Ransomware attackers usually target weak links within IT security and if they somehow obtain the secret key, they can gain access to petabytes of data with no security tools actively monitoring for these potential intrusions.
- Object is often used as a backup and that can make it a soft target because it’s not actively monitored.
- Also, Object can also be used for compliance data for legal hold, making it a target.
- With no notion of native, namespace level snapshots on object platforms recovery is made difficult.
- A few lines of python code are sufficient to attack object storage over S3.
- If your data is important you need to get monitoring in place before your data is attacked unknowingly.
So how can I ensure my Object storage is safe and actively monitored?
Protecting against any security threats including ransomware is a layered approach. Currently in Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) you can use versioning to retain multiple copies of an object to protect against potential attacks. For many years ECS has provided SEC17a-4(f) level compliance as a WORM-enabled capability when leveraging Amazon S3 API retention extensions. This WORM capability has been expanded in ECS version 3.6.2 with the addition of S3 Object Lock. Having these in place will give you a good foundation of protection for your object storage.
Building on this to offer superior protection to our customers, we have partnered with Superna. With ECS and the Ransomware Defender from Superna, we can monitor user behaviour and detect potential threats to systems quickly. If potential threats do materialize, you can be alerted quickly to disable the user keys to mitigate the threat. Alternatively, you can configure Ransomware Defender to automatically lock the corresponding application user when it detects malicious activity. This can help expedite the recovery process by providing the user with a list of infected objects. The following figure shows a thorough workflow of how Superna can help secure your storage.
For a demo of the functionality of this partnership, see Eyeglass Ransomware Defender for ECS Overview.
With this partnership we believe we can offer better protection for our customers and allow them to defend themselves against potential external security threats.
Author: Finbarr O'Riordan @finbarrorcork on Twitter
Manage Object Retention with ECS Object Lock
Wed, 08 Sep 2021 20:24:39 -0000
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Dell EMC ECS 3.6.2, available for download since August 5, 2021, includes Object Lock support for our customers. This has been a popular ask and we are delighted to be able to deliver this to our Object Storage install base as it enables them to satisfy many use cases and help them in their daily roles.
ECS allows you to store objects using a write-once-read-many (WORM) model through Object Lock. This feature prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten for a specified time or indefinitely. Also, Object Lock helps to meet WORM storage related regulatory requirements and adds a protection layer against object modifications and deletion.
ECS Object Lock allows you to manage object retention through retention periods and legal holds. With a retention period, you can specify a period during which an object remains locked. During the specified period, the object is WORM-protected, that is, the object cannot be overwritten or deleted. Legal hold provides the same protection as retention period but is independent from retention period, and does not have an expiration date. Legal hold is retained in objects until you explicitly remove it. Any user who has the appropriate Object Lock permissions can specify retention period and legal hold in objects.
So, let’s look at a practical example for how we would use these. We may have a situation in a medical environment whereby patient files are not set up correctly for retention purposes, and we have a regulatory requirement to retain these files. To comply with government regulations, we can use the following command to put a legal hold on a bucket that contains the medical records.
S3curl.pl --id=ecsflex -- http://${s3ip} /my-bucket/obj?legalhold -X PUT –d “<LegalHold><Status>on/Status></LegalHold>”
After he places a legal hold on the necessary buckets, our trusty storage administrator should be prepared if an audit is held.
Next let’s review how we use retention; Object lock has two retention modes:
- Compliance -- This is regarded as the stricter of the two modes and is primarily targeted for regulatory compliance for certain customer use cases. Users cannot overwrite or delete an object version. Additionally, users can neither remove nor shorten an object retention. However, with s3: PutObjectRetention permission, you can increase an object’s retention period.
- Governance -- The governance protection mode is focused on protecting against potential security vulnerabilities such as rogue actors, accidental deletion, or comprised credentials. Ordinary users cannot overwrite or delete an object version, but users with the special privilege of s3:BypassGovernanceRetention can remove or shorten an object retention and delete locked objects. This is, in essence, a superuser privilege, so it is not granted lightly. Additionally, a user with the s3:PutObjectRetention permission can increase the object retention period.
So, let’s look at a practical example for how we would use these modes. Let’s say from a governance perspective that we have an application owner who is working on an IT skunkworks type project that bore fruit, and they want to make sure that their work is protected and guards against any potential ransomware attack or through accidental deletion. To extend a retention time out to the year 2030 on an existing bucket, they can use this curl command.
S3curl.pl --id=ecsflex -- http://${s3ip} /my-bucket/obj?retention -X PUT –d “<Retention><Mode>GOVERNANCE</Mode><RetainUntilDate>2030-01-01T00:00:00.000Z</RetainUntilDate></Retention>”
This will ensure that the bucket is more secure and protects the user’s work from being overwritten.
ECS Object Lock fulfils some key requirements:
- Enables the management and enforcement of retention policies and legal holds for objects and buckets
- Supports a Governance and a Compliance version of enforcement
- Maintains data integrity and version consistency in multiple sites
We have delivered an API that enables customers to easily manage their Buckets and Objects while protecting themselves and complying to best practice standards. For more detail and other examples, please see our 3.6.2 Dell EMC ECS Data Access Guide.
Notes:
- The ECS Object Lock feature supports only the versioning enabled buckets.
- There is no ECS user interface for Object Lock. It can be accessed through ECS Object Lock APIs. (In the 3.6.2 Dell EMC ECS Data Access Guide, for the Object Lock API examples, see the section “Object Lock API Examples”; for the list of supported S3 APIs, see the section “S3 API supported and unsupported features”.)
- The locked objects are protected from life cycle deletions.
Author: Finbarr O’Riordan @finbarrorcork on Twitter