<p>When you integrate the use of containers with object storage, it expands on the benefits of both technologies while removing the requirement for dedicated servers. This enables potential new use cases for object storage such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mobile video (e.g., sportscasting and video editing on site)</li>
<li>Mobile army hospitals and regional health systems (such as ambulances)</li>
<li>Workflows in public clouds (such as Azure, Amazon and Wasabi)</li>
<li>Complex needs such as local storage for telemetry with async feed to the hub</li>
<li>Edge clusters for IoT</li>
</ul>
<p>On this Tech Tuesday webinar, Ryan Meek, Principal Solutions Architect, hosts Jamshid Afshar, Caringo’s lead on all things Container, to share how a containerized, auto-configured Caringo environment comes up quickly and reliably. They will also discuss how containers can be used for continuous integration testing and deployment, all-in-one laptop environments, demos, customer setups or reproductions and production rollouts.</p>


How does a containerized, auto-configured object storage environment come up quickly and reliably? And how can containers be used for continuous integration testing and deployment?

Zach Gover

Caringo uses Amazon S3 protocol for seamless policy-based tiering of data from primary storage to private Swarm cloud to public cloud.

Amazon S3

Cloud architecture are the components needed for cloud computing. Typically, front-end and back-end platforms, cloud-based delivery and a network.

Cloud Architecture

Object-based storage (e.g., Amazon S3-compliant Caringo Swarm Object Storage) is the basis for all Cloud Storage⏤private, public or hybrid).

Cloud Storage

Caringo Swarm Object Storage can be used as part of a hybrid cloud solution Amazon S3-compliant cloud services such as Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Azure

Object storage (object-based storage) is computer data storage architecture that manages data as objects, as opposed to file storage & block storage.

Object Storage

Caringo Tech Tuesday webinars offer insight into Object Storage technology and how Swarm works, plus gives you access to our storage SMEs.

Tech Tuesday

Wasabi

With Caringo FileFly & Swarm Object Storage, get a complete solution to solve issues with Microsoft® Windows® Servers bloated with unstructured data.

Windows

Cloud Seeding with Object Storage Containers

<p>The use of containers via Docker and Kubernetes has grown rapidly over the past several years. Although the roots of the technology have been around a lot longer, it got its big boost in the mid-2010s when Docker, Inc. made the building, sharing and running of images very developer friendly.</p>
<h2>How Did Docker Make Containers Developer Friendly?</h2>
<p>Docker did a lot to democratize the deployment of server software. Rather than having to requisition or use a shared Linux server to try an application, users could run the application on their laptop, very much the way it would be run in QA and production. Instead of having to find packages for a specific flavor and version of Linux or their desktop OS, users could simply bring up a predefined and configured container. More and more applications published images on the hub at <a href="https://hub.docker.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Docker.com</a> and provided docker-compose.yml files for easy deployment of related services.</p>
<h2>How Does Use of Containers Improve Collaboration?</h2>
<p>Getting developers, QA, support, and customers to configure and run things roughly the same way and to recognize their shared needs and tasks is key to developing successful software and reducing the frustration of “it works for me, why doesn’t it work for you?”</p>
<h2>What are Containers?</h2>
<p>There’s no real magic to containers—the container images are just the tarballs of a Linux OS and the application files. Running containers are just Linux processes that have a limited view of the world.</p>
<h2>Can Containers Solve the “Golden Image” Problem?</h2>
<p>In some ways, containers are like lighter-weight virtual machines, but they try to solve the <strong>golden image</strong> problem (referring to server software changes or upgrades that are difficult and become unmanageable). Use of Containers solves these issues by providing a simple and standard way to build images (Dockerfile) and to share them (Docker Hub or your own registry). Running containers is more efficient as they are sharing the same Linux kernel rather than running a separate copy in each.</p>
<p>It could be argued that containers are a declaration of <strong>surrender</strong> to package management and dependency/DLL hell. Rather than manage dependencies across a lot of unrelated software on a general Linux server, you deploy isolated images. Rather than upgrade software on your servers you deploy new container images, preserving only data volumes and configuration files.</p>
<h2>The IT Cattle Call: Pushing to Immutable Infrastructure</h2>
<p>This is all part of the general IT industry push towards <strong>immutable infrastructure</strong> for reliability and more regular software rollouts. It is a continuation of the movement towards treating servers as <strong>cattle</strong>, replaceable and scaled out, <strong>not pets</strong> named and cared for individually.</p>
<p>Although containers can use data volumes (that is, a file system directory that persists outside the lifetime of a container), it is not ideal. Preferably, containers only persist data using services like a database or object storage. Being <strong>stateless</strong> greatly simplifies container management and deployments.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/cloud-seeding-object-storage-containers-tech-tuesday-webinar"><img src="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cloud-seeding-object-storage-containers-tech-tuesday-webinar.png?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1" alt="cloud seeding with object storage containers" width="640" height="360" class="aligncenter wp-image-20024 size-full" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cloud-seeding-object-storage-containers-tech-tuesday-webinar.png?w=640&ssl=1 640w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cloud-seeding-object-storage-containers-tech-tuesday-webinar.png?resize=480%2C270&ssl=1 480w, https://i2.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cloud-seeding-object-storage-containers-tech-tuesday-webinar.png?resize=320%2C180&ssl=1 320w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p>
<h2>Cloud Seeding with Object Storage Containers</h2>
<p>When you integrate the use of containers with object storage, it expands on the benefits of both technologies while removing the requirement for dedicated servers. This enables potential new use cases for object storage such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mobile video (e.g., sportscasting and video editing on site without a server rack)</li>
<li>Mobile army hospitals and regional health systems (such as ambulances)</li>
<li>Workflows in public clouds (such as Azure, Amazon and Wasabi)</li>
<li>Complex needs such as local storage for telemetry with async feed to the hub</li>
<li>Edge clusters for IoT</li>
</ul>
<p>On June 23, I will join Ryan Meek, Caringo Principal Solutions Architect, on our Tech Tuesday webinar: <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/cloud-seeding-object-storage-containers-tech-tuesday-webinar">Cloud Seeding with Object Storage Containers</a>. We will show you how easy it is to bring up a containerized, auto-configured <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm">Swarm Object Storage</a> environment (even on a laptop) and discuss how containers can be used for continuous integration testing and deployment, all-in-one laptop environments, demos, customer setups or reproductions and production rollouts.</p>
<p>We’ll also show some examples of the power and flexibility of making Caringo Swarm available in your container ecosystem.</p>
<p>Please <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/cloud-seeding-object-storage-containers-tech-tuesday-webinar">join us for the webinar</a> and, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to <a href="https://www.caringo.com/company/contact">get in touch</a>.</p>


Using containers can solve the “golden image” problem—pulling you out of DLL hell—and, using object storage to make containers stateless makes running them a breeze.

Jamshid “Jam” Afshar has worked on Caringo Swarm, Gateway and UI Engineering teams. He brings deep expertise in object storage to his work and is currently a Senior Consultant working with many of our large, high-profile customers.

Jam Afshar

Caringo revolutionized data storage and changed the economics of storage in 2006 by launching the first Object Storage product in the marketplace. 

Data Storage

containers

Docker

golden image problem

immutable infrastructure

Containers & Server Software Deployment: The Push to Immutable Infrastructure

<p>Just 40 years ago, the first 24-hour cable news network, CNN, was launched. In that same decade, the rise of the Internet took center stage. Our world will never be the same. In fact, it seems like ancient history to even speak of the daily and weekly cycles for printed news periodicals.</p>
<h2>This Weekend’s News Cycle</h2>
<p>The amount of news over this past weekend was astounding even by 21st-Century standards. We went from months of non-stop news about the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping our world and the first manned space flight to launch from the USA in almost a decade to video footage and reports of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_George_Floyd_protests#:~:text=The%20protests%20spread%20to%20over,speaking%20out%20against%20police%20brutality">protests sparked by the death of George Floyd</a> that spanned 200+ cities and towns in the United States of America, its territories, and other locations from Asia to Wales.</p>
<h2>Changes Over the Past 40 Years in How Stories Are Recorded</h2>
<p>Unlike the civil rights movements of the 1960s, we now have footage not just from news outlets, but from <a href="https://www.caringo.com/blog/object-storage-law-enforcement-storing-large-video-files">surveillance video and the body cameras of law enforcement officers</a> and mobile phone video footage from everyday citizens. When you combine the output from all of these sources, it becomes easier to find the truth. It also means that the amount of video footage that needs to be archived indefinitely and accessed almost instantaneously is growing exponentially.</p>
<h2>What Storage is Needed for Storing Large Amounts of Video?</h2>
<p>It’s no secret that Object Storage is more cost-effective than NAS and SAN solutions when it comes to storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as video footage. And, if you’ve been following Caringo, you know that as the pioneers in object-based storage solutions, we have helped many organizations eliminate storage silos. This allows you to take advantage of features in <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm">Caringo Swarm</a> such as our <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/tech-tuesday-using-metadata-object-storage">advanced metadata search</a> that enables you to find your files when you need them—whether it is 4 days, 4 weeks, 4 years, or even 4 decades from now.</p>
<h2>What Storage Provides Instantaneous Access to Video?</h2>
<p>While it is faster to retrieve video from traditional primary storage such as SAN and NAS solutions, that model quickly fails once you amass PB+ amounts of video. Past that PB threshold, you need to consider moving your video assets to cloud-based storage, whether it is a public cloud, your own private cloud, or a hybrid cloud solution such as that offered by <a href="https://www.caringo.com/resources/solution-briefs/wasabi-caringo">Caringo and Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage</a>. And, this is where features such as <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm/partial-file-restore">partial file restore and video clipping</a> make a substantial difference for your video workflow and rate of access to your video footage.</p>
<h2>Learn More About How Caringo Can Help with Your Video Assets</h2>
<p>Storage is our business, and Swarm was built from the ground up for case studies such as storing massive amounts of video assets. If you need to store assets for your 24-hour news cycle or have large amounts of unstructured data that needs to be consolidated into a searchable archive, we have the resources to help. <a href="https://www.caringo.com/company/contact">Contact us today for a customized demo</a>, or <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars">visit our webinar home page</a> to explore topics.</p>


The amount of video footage that needs to be archived indefinitely and accessed almost instantaneously is growing exponentially.

Sarah Cook is Caringo's Director of Marketing and brings deep expertise in Technical and Marketing Communications and Product Marketing. Sarah has worked for some of the biggest names in technology including Dell and Cisco. Sarah has a B.A. in English Composition with a minor in Music from the University of North Texas.

Sarah Cook

Law enforcement (those who enforce laws, investigate crimes and make arrests), can use Object Storage to store and protect video surveillance data.

Law Enforcement

Metadata is "data about data" and can be descriptive, structural, administrative, reference or statistical metadata that is auto- or user-generated.

Metadata

Swarm Storage provides a complete S3-compliant platform for data protection, management, organization & search at massive scale for unstructured data.

Swarm Storage

From Bystander to Pro: Video Storage & the Nonstop News Cycle

<p>Long before the term “cloud” was being used, the lively debate regarding on-premises versus offsite/managed storage raged on with questions such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>Should you be moving all of your data to the cloud?</li>
<li>Should you keep your data on-prem?</li>
<li>Is there a middle ground, and is hybrid cloud storage practical?</li>
</ul>
<p>In this episode of our Brews & Bytes live webcast, David Boland, Wasabi Director of Product Marketing, and Eric Dey, Caringo Director of Product, join host Adrian J Herrera, VP Marketing at Caringo, to discuss these questions. With perspectives as leaders in companies that specialize in cloud storage and on-premise storage and also as technology industry professionals with multiple decades of experience, this is sure to be a lively conversation. You don’t want to miss this one!</p>


Before the term “cloud” was coined, the debate regarding on-prem vs offsite/managed storage raged on. Hear what storage leaders have to say.

Caringo Brews and Bytes talks offer insight into top storage professionals in technology, storage and common questions which exist in the markets.

Brews and Bytes

Swarm Object Storage is a valuable tool in disaster recover (DR) strategy, giving you data resilience and simplifying recovery of data on or off prem.

Disaster Recovery

Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage

On-Premises and Cloud Storage — Friends or Foes?

<p>In recent years, we have seen an increase in the importance of data access directly from the archive, driven by on-demand use cases and global collaboration. As a result, for content-centered workflows, the primary requirement is shifting from being low-cost to being instantly accessible. Why? Because media-centric organizations, research facilities, governments and corporations worldwide want to monetize and use the vast amounts of data being created. Look up “data is the new oil” on Google, and you will see not only the original article but all the spin-off discussions.</p>
<h2>Disaster Recovery Planning in the Past</h2>
<p>Historically, when looking at <a href="https://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/definition/disaster-recovery">Disaster Planning</a>, organizations considered ransomware attacks, data or site loss. “I need to be able to recover my data within x hours” or “I need to be able to stand up another site in x days.” These questions are all still very relevant, however, with COVID-19, site quarantines are something IT execs now at a minimum discuss and have a plan for. In these scenarios, staff at sites is dramatically reduced, however, the site itself is still operable. This is where data accessibility becomes important. If your data and archives are still accessible, many media and content-driven organizations can ensure an acceptable level of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_continuity_planning#Business_continuity">business continuity</a> during these events.</p>
<h2>Disaster Recovery Planning in 2020</h2>
<p>On our February 2020 Brews & Bytes episode, StorageDNA CEO Tribid “TC” Chakravarty made some excellent points regarding what IT executives should think about when <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/economical-storage-data-insight-data-movement-storage-options">developing their Disaster Recovery (DR) plan</a> and they all centered around ensuring <em>continued data accessibility</em>, not just the ability to <em>recover</em> data. TC suggested that you should take a 3-2-1-1 approach to Backup and DR; that is, you should keep 3 copies of data on 2 different types of media with 1 offsite and 1 instantly accessible in a private or public cloud (as opposed to the traditional 3-2-1 rule that doesn’t include 1 instantly accessible archived copy). We at Caringo agree with TC.</p>
<h2>How Can You Ensure Continued Data Accessibility?</h2>
<p>There are many technologies and options to ensure remote collaboration and continued data accessibility such as object storage, online meeting platforms, cloud services and collaboration platforms.</p>
<p>At Caringo, we have developed <a href="https://www.caringo.com/partners">a rich ecosystem of technology and business partnerships</a> to enable you to use best-of-breed solutions to keep your data online and accessible. This month, we have two live online events so you can learn more about ensuring and enabling data accessibility for your organization’s Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plan.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/managing-data-hpc-research-environments-tech-tuesday"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/managing-data-hpc-research-environments-tech-tuesday.png?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1" alt="Managing Data in HPC & Research Environments" width="640" height="360" class="wp-image-15585 size-full aligncenter" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/managing-data-hpc-research-environments-tech-tuesday.png?w=640&ssl=1 640w, https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/managing-data-hpc-research-environments-tech-tuesday.png?resize=480%2C270&ssl=1 480w, https://i0.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/managing-data-hpc-research-environments-tech-tuesday.png?resize=320%2C180&ssl=1 320w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p>
<h2>Learn How to Manage Data in HPC & Research Environments</h2>
<p>On March 24, join us for our Tech Tuesday webinar featuring Rachana Ananthakrishnan, Globus Head of Product, and Eric Dey, Caringo Director of Product. They will discuss <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/managing-data-hpc-research-environments-tech-tuesday">managing data in HPC and research environments</a>. The Globus platform enables global access to data by distributed research organizations.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/premises-cloud-storage-friends-foes"><img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/on-prem-cloud-storage-vs-offsite-managed-wasabi-caringo-cloud-solution.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1" alt="On-Premises & Cloud Storage, Friend or Foes? Caringo and Wasabi Cloud Storage Solution" width="640" height="360" class="wp-image-15651 size-full aligncenter" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/on-prem-cloud-storage-vs-offsite-managed-wasabi-caringo-cloud-solution.jpg?w=640&ssl=1 640w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/on-prem-cloud-storage-vs-offsite-managed-wasabi-caringo-cloud-solution.jpg?resize=480%2C270&ssl=1 480w, https://i1.wp.com/www.caringo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/on-prem-cloud-storage-vs-offsite-managed-wasabi-caringo-cloud-solution.jpg?resize=320%2C180&ssl=1 320w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a></p>
<h2>Learn About On-Premises + Cloud Storage</h2>
<p>On March 26, our 3rd episode of Brews & Bytes will hit the airwaves. In this livestream webcast, I’ll host David Boland, Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage’s Director of Product Marketing, and Eric Dey for a lively discussion focused on whether <a href="https://www.caringo.com/webinars/premises-cloud-storage-friends-foes">on-premises and cloud storage</a> can coexist in your workflows.</p>
<p>Caringo and Wasabi will both be at <a href="https://www.caringo.com/events/globusworld-2020-april-29-30">GlobusWorld 2020 April 29-30</a>.</p>


How do you plan for Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity that ensures your data remains accessible at all times?

Adrian "AJ" Herrera has over 20 years of experience bringing innovative storage, cloud and media software and services to market. With an MBA from San Diego State University and a BS in Information Systems from Chapman University, AJ serves as Caringo's VP of Marketing.

Adrian Herrera

Swarm Object Storage continuously monitors data to ensure multiple copies are available at any given time, so you always have a back-up copy.

Backup &amp; Recovery

With Caringo Swarm Object Storage, you get continuous, built-in data protection along with exceptional resilience, recovery, and content integrity. 

Data Protection

As you define your storage strategy, what are the required characteristics for each tier of your storage and what variables affect each storage tier?

Strategy

Data Access

Disaster Recover

Planning for Data Access, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Backup & Recovery

<p>In today’s digital world, you interact with hybrid storage a few hundred times a day (you just might not know it). From the storage in your phones, connected device, cars and computers to the storage in data centers behind every service you use—the manageability, power consumption, access characteristics and data durability of the underlying storage are all designed to ensure the best quality of service and consumer experience. Storage in remote data centers works seamlessly with the local storage in your device, home or office to make sure whatever digital content you want to consume is available when you need it.</p>
<h2>Hybrid Storage Should Just Work</h2>
<p>At Caringo, we feel that on-prem object storage and cloud storage should interact the same way—seamlessly with your existing workflows. This is why we added the ability to instantly backup a Swarm domain or an entire cluster to any S3-compliant services. One of the first services we have certified this functionality with is Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage.</p>
<h2>Key Features of Caringo Swarm Object Storage & Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm">Caringo Swarm object storage</a> provides limitlessly scalable, on-prem S3 storage delivered as software or an appliance This includes built-in multi-tenancy, content management, search and secure file sharing. Wasabi adds the ability to easily add a geographically dispersed disaster recovery (DR) site in minutes. This enables business continuity by backing up Swarm data to Wasabi, eliminating the need for you to maintain a secondary data center. You can easily satisfy offsite data protection requirements at a fraction of the cost of other public cloud providers.</p>
<h2>Wasabi Delivers Cloud Storage Pricing Transparency</h2>
<p>After talking to thousands of people about cloud storage, the most common concern we hear is price, specifically, the compounding costs of the service over time and the unpredictable fees associated with API calls and access fees. Wasabi addresses both of these concerns by offering a flat $0.0059/GB/month storage fee without imposing extra fees to retrieve data, and they also don’t charge for API calls (PUT, GET, DELETE…). So, if some form of disaster should happen or if you need to move Swarm data on Wasabi to a secondary on-prem Swarm cluster, you won’t be charged additional fees! This could result in significant cost savings depending on how much data you need to restore or move.</p>
<p>This alone should be reason enough to put Wasabi on your shortlist if you are considering a hybrid cloud storage approach. If you need further convincing, check out this list of the <a href="https://wasabi.com/hybrid-storage-strategy/">benefits of a hybrid cloud storage strategy</a> on their site.</p>
<h2>Interested in Learning More?</h2>
<p>If you are interested in learning more, download the <a href="https://www.caringo.com/resources/solution-briefs/wasabi-caringo">Caringo and Wasabi Solution brief</a>. And, as always, we are here to answer any questions you may have. Feel free to <a href="mailto:info@caringo.com">send us an email</a> or to <a href="https://www.caringo.com/products/swarm/contact">contact</a> us.</p>


Hybrid storage should just work. Swarm Object Storage and Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage do just that, integrating seamlessly with your workflows.

Hybrid Cloud is storage that has a mix of on-premises, private cloud storage (e.g., Caringo Swarm Object Storage) & 3rd-party public cloud services.

Hybrid Cloud

REST is a representational state transfer software architecture. Caringo Swarm uses a RESTful API to facilitate device & Internet interoperability.

The Topic

Wasabi

Related Topics

Wasabi Recent Content

Cloud Seeding with Object Storage Containers

Containers & Server Software Deployment: The Push to Immutable Infrastructure

From Bystander to Pro: Video Storage & the Nonstop News Cycle

On-Premises and Cloud Storage — Friends or Foes?

Planning for Data Access, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Hybrid Storage: Swarm Object Storage & Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage