What is Microsoft Azure StorSimple?
In the enablement of people centric IT or BYOD, people are empowered at their organization to use devices such as smartphones and tablets to consume and create content on behalf of their organization. While focus on security has been top of mind as of late, some IT departments are now focusing on a new growing problem. Where to store all the data being created?
In light of this, Microsoft has combined both Azure and StorSimple services to create a hybrid cloud storage offering which can be used as primary storage, archiving or for disaster recovery. Hybrid storage arrays provided via the StorSimple 8000 offering enable tighter Azure integration, centralized data management and new use cases. In combining the best of both worlds, both on premise and in cloud, system administrators are better supported in cutting storage costs, providing a scalable storage solution and spending less time on infrastructure management.
Both the StorSimple 8100 and 8600 use Azure storage as a hybrid cloud tier for both off-site data protection and automatic capacity expansion allowing system administrators piece of mind around capacity planning and off-site backup or replication solutions. Supporting on premise VMware, Linux and Hyper-V servers, StorSimple’s virtual appliance allows for applications to be run accessing snapshots of virtual volumes in the cloud. Furthermore reporting on historical datasets is also supported and does not disrupt existing work within the datacenter.
Consolidating management for all of an organization’s StorSimple arrays and Virtual Appliances are managed via the Azure StorSimple Manager. The console is used to control data management and storage ensuring the StorSimple implementation adheres to retention and data protection policies. Reporting is provided via dashboard reporting on trends and issues as they arise.