EMC Atmos is a cloud storage platform that enables enterprises and service providers to store, manage, and protect globally distributed, unstructured content at scale. A key differentiator of Atmos is its management of data in a policy-driven, object-based way. Key to this functionality is the flexible user metadata. Coupling objects with metadata tags allows objects to be grouped together logically. Atmos can then apply user-defined policies to groups of objects to determine object layout, replication levels, and replica placement. This is now available on the latest 3rd generation hardware and is now running the latest 2.1 SP1 software version. 2.1 introduces some great new features that I have detailed below. The power of the cloud can now be built within your data center for the highest security, availability, simplicity, and best investment with Atmos.
- Now supports bonding and VLAN tagging to increase bandwidth and enhance network flexibility
- Support for Amazon S3 API as an access method for Amazon S3 applications
- Anonymous upload/download
- Quota enablement
- Three way replication – This feature allows three primary MDS replicas to exist on any set of nodes within an RMG, thereby increasing MDS capacity utilization per disk
- Node rebalancing
- Enhanced Atmos CAS policy management
- This release introduces a new upgrade framework that allows upgrade or hotfix images to be uploaded to Atmos by browsing local and network file systems.
- Disk management enhancements
- Configuration management enhancements
- Event management and monitoring
- Atmos System Administration Console enhancements
The support for Amazon S3 will bring simplicity to the developers that don’t need to perform additional development to leverage the cloud platform. Applications can be federated out to Atmos providers across the globe for simple scalability. For this IT shops that are trying to bring their cloud back into the datacenter, this will make that transition easier. Anonymous upload/download should put and end to complicated transfers of large files. Legal firms sharing cases, Oil and Gas companies moving around geographic data, manufactures transferring project files, and much more can now be simplified. Quota enablement will ensure the cloud storage administrators have control over their infrastructure.
This release also brings a number of usability enhancements making the platform even easier to manage. The new Gen3 hardware introduces larger capacity, and is built on an Intel based compute infrastructure. Along with the release of the new software comes a new version of Atmos GeoDrive with new features outlined below. Atmos GeoDrive provides a local file system interface through which a user can store and retrieve files on an EMC Atmos Cloud server. This allows the user to quickly and easily store and retrieve files (such as, pictures, movies, and documents) in the cloud without the need for additional applications and tools.
- GeoDrive can act as an enterprise “gateway” server for multiple users to the Atmos cloud. This feature allows GeoDrive to be “hosted” on a Windows server and shared to individual users via CIFS (each user maps a network drive). New GeoDrive functionality to support the feature includes:
- Clustering — GeoDrive 1.1 is supported in a clustered Windows environment for failover support.
- User provisioning — The ability to provision large numbers of users via Atmos UIDs or AD credentials.
- GeoDrive allows you to create a “shareable URL” to associate with a specified file. A shareable URL is a temporary link to a file in the cloud for others to use.
- Deleted file recovery from the “trash” (when implemented as a policy on Atmos).
- Ability to create pre-defined and/or user-defined metadata tags. Metadata tags provide a way for GeoDrive users to manage the way files are handled in the cloud based on policies created by the System Administrator.
- Scripted installation and configuration support that allows enterprise users to develop repeatable processes for remote GeoDrive installation/configuration using custom utilities and enhanced GeoDrive CLI commands.
- Enhanced options that allow a user to manage logging messages and SMTP notifications, fine-tune GeoDrive performance, and manually exclude potential (or known) processes that may have compatibility issues with GeoDrive. Additionally, GeoDrive allows a user to pause or manually start uploads, temporarily disconnect a drive, monitor file transfer status, and to import/export GeoDrive configuration files.
- Updated compression and encryption including FIPS mode/Zlib support for enhanced data encryption/compression and automatic support for Windows CNG libraries (FIPS 140-2 certified) for encryption/decryption, hashing, and random number generation
Digital IRL 