Ionir Simplifies Data Migration Between Kubernetes Clusters
On the heels of raising an additional $11 million in funding, Ionir today launched a namesake software-defined storage and data management platform that makes it easier to copy or move stateful applications between Kubernetes environments using a capability dubbed Data Teleport.
Ionir CEO Jacob Cherian says as the number of Kubernetes clusters an organization needs to manage expands, the scope of the data management challenges organizations will encounter will increase. In addition to simply providing development teams and analytics applications with copies of data, hybrid cloud computing ambitions eventually will also require IT teams to move stateful applications and their associated data sets across clusters running on multiple platforms, Cherian notes.
The Ionir platform extends storage management software that optimizes reads and writes on storage systems using predictive algorithms originally developed by Reduxio. Data Teleport extends that core capability to also enable persistent volumes to be moved or copied in less than 40 seconds regardless of the size of the volume or the amount of data involved, he says.
Other capabilities include support for instant clones to ensure data and application recovery as well as global deduplication and compression capabilities to make it efficient to deploy stateful applications at scale. At the core of that capability is a microservices-based platform that not only scales up and down as required but also serves to ensure the Ionir platform is highly available.
The need to run stateful applications in Kubernetes environments is a hotly debated topic. Some IT organizations prefer to deploy stateless applications on Kubernetes clusters that then store data on external storage systems. However, as the number of applications running on Kubernetes clusters increases, the case for unifying compute, storage and network management on those clusters grows stronger.
Moving data is an unavoidable IT task that historically has required a lot of time and effort. By automating that process, IT teams should be able to have more control over their environments. In theory, IT teams can port applications to a new platform. However, moving the data attached to those applications has typically been problematic, which is one reason application workloads frequently don’t move even after an organization may have standardized on a distribution of Kubernetes running on multiple platforms.
In general, data management in Kubernetes environments is going to be much different than it has been in legacy IT environments. Instead of having to buy separate add-on applications, capabilities such as snapshots will be baked into the core platform as the management of storage and data become more integrated.
Less clear, of course, is to what degree data and storage management will remain a separate IT discipline as IT processes become more automated. Regardless of how it’s accomplished, however, most IT teams should expect to see even more copies of data being moved about the enterprise as organizations continue to expand the global footprint of their IT environments.
