How can you make the edge and cloud work together for you?

25 October 2021

Chris Roberts, director, solutions architect, UK & Ireland at NetApp

Nowadays storage must have enough capacity for your data, but it also must provide dozens of other functionalities to satisfy your requirements. Data protection, resilience, analytics, and performance optimisation are all essentials. But if you’re accustomed to an on-premise data-centre or single cloud, it’s easy to overlook cross-platform compatibility.

How many APIs do you want for your storage? The right answer is that you need APIs across all platforms and places, protocols and drive types, vendors, and technologies. But most organisations just aren’t there yet. Their on-premises storage doesn’t use the same APIs as their cloud storage. Their block storage doesn’t use the same APIs as their file storage.

In a world of microservices, agility is a key to success. Any obstacles drive up costs and complexity and make innovation more challenging. To avoid these obstacles, a forward-looking data storage strategy that considers cross-platform compatibility should be adopted.

Edge computing challenges and possibilities

Cutting complexity makes sense for the core and the cloud, but how does it work for edge computing? After all, as Gartner points out, most edge environments are entirely customised, not standardised. It’s also hard to fully integrate mature infrastructure with first- second-generation infrastructure like edge computing that’s in a constant state of evolution and innovation.

But here’s the thing. Organisations must integrate the edge. According to Gartner, by next year, over 50% of enterprise data will be created and processed outside the data centre or cloud. This highlights the value of data, demonstrating that it can’t live in a pool merged together with different tools, techniques, and technologies.

Edge datasets need to be governed and analysed just like any source of data in the enterprise. The infrastructures should be as integrated as possible so that edge data can be available to emerging services, no matter where they are – be it the edge, the core, or the cloud.

No-one’s denying that integration is challenging. Many edge environments are built with solutions that are unlike anything in the data centre or cloud. Additionally their capabilities aren’t mature or are works-in-progress—operation, security and compliance, orchestration, and optimisation capabilities that are all autonomous. These challenges have mostly been worked out in the core and the cloud, but they haven’t been fully solved at the edge.

What are the right priorities at the edge?

Firstly, versatility matters. It would be nice to have a single platform that can serve multiple needs, such as being able to handle both block and file. It should support capacity requirements and offer essential services for insight and resilience without compromise.

There’s also a need for simplicity. Some data centre platforms worry too much about edge. Smart vendors provide edge storage that can run on smaller devices or in a container that’s built with a subset of core or cloud storage functionality.

Finally, compatibility matters. Storage should be built for edge, yet compatible with cloud and core. Edge shouldn’t be cut off from the rest of the enterprise. Ideally, edge storage should be provisioned and managed seamlessly and make data migration to core or cloud easy. And it should use the same APIs as core or cloud storage to simplify development efforts and reduce the risk of error.

The right approach translates into success

Organisations are looking for a proven approach to storage that spans many requirements without compromising on essential capabilities. Using an excellent storage technology that runs wherever you need it, be it vendor platforms or public cloud resources offers you more flexibility in deploying the right storage in the right place at the right cost. This approach translates into accelerated development, better efficiency, and improved cost controls.