Taneja Blog / Systems and Technology

DDN and Big Data’s Value Chain

Data has never been easy to manage as data growth commonly outstrips storage management tools.  It’s even harder today because of the nature of so-called “big data,” which is high growth, high volume, AND stays active for frequent re-use, processing or analysis. Managing data at this level is extremely challenging and few vendors are capable both of extremely scalable capacity and providing high levels of performance, accessibility and multiple application integration.

DDN was one of the first vendors to realize that Big Data is these two parts, and that now offers a toolset both for highly scalable capacity and for active data management on a very large scale. DDN’s new DirectMon monitoring software enables big data administrators to simplify big data workflow administration across the whole complex value chain, which is made up of multiple applications and workloads.

DirectMon monitors and configures large-scale storage arrays and file systems, including SFA Storage Arrays, GridScaler file systems, and IBM GPFS environments. Additional support areas are coming including DDN ExaScaler and native analytics.

Key features

•     Run statistics on GridScaler, physical servers and SFA storage subsystems. Regularly collect logs and configuration data.

•    Historical / trend data reports and exportable graphics; import profiles of existing and new GridScaler deployments.

•    Server/controller shutdown and restart.

•    Come with pre-defined roles; create roles and additional users.

•    Single interface allows management of multiple heterogeneous SFA storage arrays, GridScaler and ExaScaler systems. Discover, configure, duplicate, manage and optimize complete systems.

•    Set thresholds and be notified of performance and hardware/software problems to prevent downtime. Built-in high availability for mission critical environments.

•    Available as a completely pre-installed management appliance or a software application that can be installed on virtual machines.

DDN’s high performance, scalable block and file storage are good fits for many companies launching big data initiatives. DirectMon is a welcome evolution of these big data capabilities. It simplifies the extreme complexity of big data storage by adding centralized management to high performance and massive scalability.