The fourth major release of VAST Data’s array operating system introduces indestructible snapshots, NFS v4.1 security and speed measures, central control for fleets of VAST systems, and analytics for long-range planning.
Admins can manage larger groups of arrays through a single, cloud-based pane of glass, and look into capacity usage inside an individual array in more detail. This set of incremental improvements will help its customers grow their VAST Data deployments without increasing their management and security burden while being better able to understand array usage history and trends.
Co-founder and CEO Renen Hallak provided the announcement quote for VASTOS v4: ”Data is the lifeblood of every organisation, and providing fast, affordable and safe access to that data is our mission. … Now customers have the only platform they need for their modern applications, including AI, big data, backup, containers, and beyond.”
Ah yes, containers. Let’s cover that before getting into the meat of VASTOS. Version 4 provides quality of service (QoS) across pools of highly-available containers. VIP-pool view policies enable customers to limit data exports to specific pools and/or VLANs, making it possible to restrict data access along hardware and network boundaries.
Ransomware security and a speed boost
VASTOS now has purportedly indestructible data snapshots. The read-only snapshots and snapshot policies are immutable and so immune from ransomware attacks, accidental and deliberate deletion.
VAST says its NFS v4.1 implementation has support for V5 Kerberos’s authentication/authorisation and NFS 4 access control lists (ACLs), integrated file and byte-range locking for fine-grained and secure permissions to files and directories.
It also supports NFS 4 nconnect, to provide multiple network connections between the NFS client and the storage port. This bypasses the throughput limitations of a single TCP connection.
Centralised management
A Data Uplink provides the ability for enterprise VAST array managers to look after a fleet of VAST arrays anywhere in the world using a cloud connection. This cloud-based scheme uses the same centralised portal that VAST’s Co-Pilot and support teams use to manage the company’s global fleet of Universal Storage systems.
Array systems now provide so-called Data Flows which are visually displayed performance statistics with a drill-down feature to look at specific data flows.
V4 VASTOS also brings the ability for admins to look in more detail at how both logical and physical capacity is being used, with visual indicators, to help with capacity planning.
VASTOS v4 is now available to VAST customers.
