TheMagIT took a closer look at four distributed storage technologies, which are deployable in the form of containers.
The third is Portworx, a container storage solution developed specifically to serve the persistence needs of Docker environments.
Portworks
While Docker's infrastructure is well suited to stateless applications (applications that do not retain a stateful notion), it was less so until recently for "stateful" applications, which need to persist data on a volume in block mode (this is, for example, the case of applications dependent on SQL or NoSQL databases).
To address this problem, Portworx, a young California company, developed its Portworx PX technology, a distributed storage solution implemented as Docker containers. It is designed to deliver persistent storage (or not) to applications deployed as containers.
Solve the problem of persistent storage for Docker
With the data volumes of Docker, it is natively possible to "mount" a directory of the host server in a container. Docker's volume plug-in technology has more recently extended this model to SAN and NAS shared storage and to associate iSCSI, NFS, or Fiber Channel volumes to a container. This has allowed most storage array builders to integrate their systems with Docker to provide persistent storage services to containers - either with their own plug-ins or via Flocker support. This approach, however, poses the usual problem of coexistence between mass-based container-based systems and storage which remains centralized.
Portworx intends to offer an alternative to this traditional storage model. The firm, created in 2014, raised $ 8.5 million and was founded by experienced storage stakeholders. CEO Murli Thirumale and CTO Goutham Rao previously co-founded Ocarina Networks, a compression and deduplication specialist acquired by Dell in 2010. And third co-founder, Vinod Jayaraman, is also from Ocarina. after developing the CIFS optimization stack from F5 Networks.
A hyperconverged storage architecture for the contents.
Portworx's PX Enterprise technology actually brings a hyperconverged storage layer to servers running Docker containers. In practice, PX Enterprise comes in the form of a distributed and programmable storage layer. Each node participating in a Portworx cluster runs a privileged container, which detects local storage resources (hard drives and SSDs) and allows them to be integrated into a distributed storage pool. Like the Nutanix file system for VMs, Portworx technology creates a distributed storage array that can be consumed by containers deployed on cluster member servers.
The second stage of the Portworx rocket is the integration of technology with cluster management tools like Mesos , Docker Swarm or Kubernetes . This integration allows organizations to automate container storage provisioning, as well as dynamically provisioning new servers participating in the cluster. It also helps maintain associations between volumes and containers. As the CEO of Portworx explains, technology makes it possible to treat infrastructure as code and dynamically provision it as needed.
PX Enterprise also allows real-time monitoring of the performance delivered to each container and therefore informs cluster management tools of possible SLA failures and responds accordingly, for example by moving the volume to a higher class of service. appropriate (to a volume consisting of SSDs rather than hard drives). Similarly, storage services delivered by PX Enterprise (snapshot, replication ...) are orchestrable via tools such as Mesos or Swarm.
According to Portworx, its technology is about 70 percent less expensive than a traditional SAN. It is possible for developers to test the company's technology for free via the PX Developer offer, which is limited to three server nodes and lacks some of the advanced features such as data encryption, ACL management, or multiple cluster management. a unique console. A demo version of PX Enterprise is also available upon request.
Portworx's PX Enterprise technology actually brings a hyperconverged storage layer to servers running Docker containers. In practice, PX Enterprise comes in the form of a distributed and programmable storage layer. Each node participating in a Portworx cluster runs a privileged container, which detects local storage resources (hard drives and SSDs) and allows them to be integrated into a distributed storage pool. Like the Nutanix file system for VMs, Portworx technology creates a distributed storage array that can be consumed by containers deployed on cluster member servers.
The second stage of the Portworx rocket is the integration of technology with cluster management tools like Mesos , Docker Swarm or Kubernetes . This integration allows organizations to automate container storage provisioning, as well as dynamically provisioning new servers participating in the cluster. It also helps maintain associations between volumes and containers. As the CEO of Portworx explains, technology makes it possible to treat infrastructure as code and dynamically provision it as needed.
PX Enterprise also allows real-time monitoring of the performance delivered to each container and therefore informs cluster management tools of possible SLA failures and responds accordingly, for example by moving the volume to a higher class of service. appropriate (to a volume consisting of SSDs rather than hard drives). Similarly, storage services delivered by PX Enterprise (snapshot, replication ...) are orchestrable via tools such as Mesos or Swarm.
According to Portworx, its technology is about 70 percent less expensive than a traditional SAN. It is possible for developers to test the company's technology for free via the PX Developer offer, which is limited to three server nodes and lacks some of the advanced features such as data encryption, ACL management, or multiple cluster management. a unique console. A demo version of PX Enterprise is also available upon request.
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