Ready for the final instalment of our NetApp cloud terminology explainer? Here are three more important phrases you need to know today.
What is Persistent Memory?
Real-time computing demands real-time access to data – and traditional storage formats like spinning disks or even SSDs are unable to deliver the speeds required.
One solution to this problem would be to run entire datasets in RAM. However, the hardware costs would be prohibitively expensive. There is also a significant risk of data loss in the event of power loss – all volatile memory would be wiped at reset.
NetApp offers an alternative – Persistent Memory (PMEM). They describe it as ‘a solid-state high-performance byte-addressable memory device that resides on the memory bus’. Not unlike SSD storage, PMEM offers DRAM-like performance at a lower cost and without the volatility of ‘true’ RAM. PMEM is also cacheable in the CPU, unlike PCIe-connected storage.
PMEM has been specifically designed to meet the challenges of using large datasets and to address the speed issues of traditional storage architecture.
What is Cloud Monitoring?
Monitoring is a fundamental requirement of IT operations, allowing engineers to identify and rectify issues to minimise impact on line-of-business applications. However as workloads have been offloaded to the cloud, ITOPs have lost some visibility of assets, particularly in terms of resource usage and costs. Hosted in the cloud, cloud monitoring tools provide any time, any place access to data about how your hosted infrastructure is performing.
NetApp has identified five key areas of cloud monitoring that every business needs to be aware of (and use). Unsurprisingly, most correlate to existing on-premise techniques:
1. Database monitoring
Techniques to track processes, queries, availability, and consumption of cloud database resources. Monitoring should also address data integrity, real-time usage data and potential security issues.
2. Website monitoring
Monitoring to answer questions like: Are our web-facing assets available and functioning correctly? Who is using them and how much? Are there any errors that need to be addressed?
3. Virtual network monitoring
Software-based virtual networks provide far greater control for cloud architects. Monitoring allows them to see how their virtualised routers, firewalls and load balancers are performing – and how they could be improved.
4. Cloud storage monitoring
Given the resource consumption billing model, cloud storage monitoring is essential. Not only does your DevOps team need to analyse and optimise storage performance, they also need to be fully informed of costs to ensure budgetary control.
5. Virtual machine monitoring
Very similar to the tools used to manage your on-premise virtualised resources, cloud monitoring offers much the same for any virtual machines hosted on IaaS platforms. Again, those insights can be used to improve performance and ROI.
What are Kubernetes Persistent Volumes?
Containers are a fundamental aspect of modern application design, offering a way to create and destroy resources quickly to meet scalable demand. However, any data contained in the container is lost when it is destroyed.
Kubernetes Persistent Volumes and their contents remain in place after any connected containers are destroyed. These volumes have the advantage of being relatively lightweight, particularly when compared to a full virtual machine. Containers are fast, agile and portable, far better suited to the containerised design of modern web applications.
To learn more about NetApp cloud terminology and cloud offerings or if you would like to know anything else about these technologies – please give the WTL team a call . We’re always happy to help!