Automation / Polices

Policy-based Management and Automation

ParaScale's Policy Engine is a rules engine that runs on the CN. The Policy Engine simplifies management by synchronizing and administering hundreds of servers and thousands of disks. The policies managed by the engine continually tune the performance of the cloud to achieve the desired objectives like maximizing disk availability, maximizing read bandwidth and minimizing access latency.

Policies for Data Redundancy
To protect against both disk failure and server failure, ParaScale can maintain multiple copies of each file. The number of replicas can be tuned to account for performance or risk of disk or server failure. Replicating files to multiple nodes also removes the need for expensive hardware based protection schemes such as RAID or SAN implementations.

Auto-Configuration
Users can download software from ParaScale, install a RPM on a server and be off and running. Storage nodes are automatically discovered by the control node and the configuration is automated. Once installed, an administrator can easily manage 100’s of nodes due to the self healing and managing aspects of the cloud.

Automatic Capacity Balancing
ParaScale also includes system intelligence that understands the nuances of each node. The software will automatically balance capacity utilization across the entire cloud. When a new node is added the available storage will be leveraged to help offload existing node capacity. This also helps the system to avoid write contention by removing the “only one node has available storage” problem.

Self-Healing
Hardware failures do not impact clients or application access. When a failure is automatically detected by the system a number of actions are taken. First the IP address of the node is moved to a surviving member so access can continue. An email alert is then triggered to notify the administrator of the issue. Finally, the replication policies are reinforced by the system by creating copies, on surviving nodes, of any files that were stored on the failed node. Data continues to flow and access to files is not compromised.

Other Resources to Consider

If you are looking for an introduction and overview of cloud storage, visit the What is Cloud Storage section of the library.

If you are looking for the technology differences between cloud storage and other storage offerings, visit the Cloud Storage Technology section of the library.

For white papers and audio / video guides to ParaScale, visit the ParaScale Cloud Storage section of the library.

If you are ready to download a trial of ParaScale, visit the Evaluating ParaScale section of the library.