Skip to main content

How Simplyblock helps with Cloud Cost Optimization

How Simplyblock Helps with Cloud Storage Cost Optimization

In the cloud, storage costs can quickly spiral out of control. Simplyblock offers a powerful solution to this challenge by intelligently optimizing your cloud storage usage. At its core, simplyblock acts as a storage orchestrator, unifying access to various storage technologies like Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and Local Instance Storage (NVMe disk).

Thin Provisioning

One of simplyblock’s key features is thin provisioning. It allows you to create virtual disks of any size without pre-allocating the full capacity from your underlying storage pool. In practice, this means you only pay for the storage you actually use, not what you’ve provisioned “just in case.” This approach can lead to significant cost savings, especially in environments where storage needs fluctuate or are difficult to predict, such as multi-tenant databases.

Automatic Data Tiering

Simplyblock also consolidates partially utilized storage volumes into a shared pool. This consolidation not only saves costs but also simplifies storage management. Instead of juggling multiple underutilized volumes, you can create a single, efficiently used pool that serves all your needs.

Storage consolidation

Another cost-saving feature is simplyblock’s ability to automatically move infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage tiers, like Amazon S3. This tiering happens transparently, so your applications don’t need to be modified to benefit from the cost savings of using cheaper storage for cold data.

Multi-Attach Capabilities

Multi-attach functionality is particularly useful for Highly Available instances, allowing multiple instances to access the same storage volume simultaneously. Without multi-attach, you might need to create separate copies of data for each instance that needs access. With multi-attach, multiple instances can share a single copy of the data. This reduces the total amount of storage needed, directly lowering costs.

Key Benefits of Simplyblock

  1. Cost Reduction: Through thin provisioning, storage pooling, multi-attach and automatic tiering, simplyblock can significantly reduce your cloud storage costs.
  2. Performance Optimization: Simplyblock uses NVMe over TCP, which offers better performance than traditional iSCSI connections. It can also utilize Local Instance Storage for ultra-low latency access.
  3. Simplified Management: By consolidating storage and providing a unified interface, simplyblock reduces the complexity of managing multiple storage types and volumes.
  4. Enhanced Security: Simplyblock offers per-volume encryption and fully encrypted communication between storage and clients.
  5. Disaster Recovery: With its write-ahead log streamed to Amazon S3, simplyblock provides robust disaster recovery capabilities across availability zones.
  6. Multi-Tenancy Support: Simplyblock allows full isolation between multiple tenants on a shared storage pool, enabling efficient resource use for managed service providers.
  7. Database Branching: The copy-on-write technology used by simplyblock enables instant snapshots and clones, making database branching fast and storage-efficient.
  8. Kubernetes Integration: Simplyblock offers a Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver, making it easy to use within Kubernetes environments.
  9. High Availability: Multi-attach capabilities allow for highly available configurations, especially beneficial for clustered applications.
  10. Improved Failover: In case of instance failure, another instance can quickly take over without storage-related delays, reducing downtime.
  11. Load Balancing: Workloads can be distributed across multiple instances that all have access to the same data, leading to better resource utilization.

Practical Use Cases for Simplyblock

Managed Database Services: If you’re offering managed database services, simplyblock’s thin provisioning and pay-by-use model can help you optimize costs while still providing flexible storage options to your customers. The ability to quickly create database clones is also a valuable feature for development and testing scenarios.

Multi-Database Environments: For companies using multiple database types, simplyblock’s ability to take consistent snapshots across multiple logical volumes is invaluable. This feature ensures that your backups are coherent across all your data stores, simplifying disaster recovery and data management.

High-Performance Computing: The use of Local Instance Storage and NVMe over TCP makes simplyblock an excellent choice for high-performance computing scenarios where low latency is crucial.

Cost-Efficient DevOps: The ability to instantly create volume clones can significantly speed up development and testing processes without incurring additional storage costs.

Observability and Analytics Platforms: Companies offering observability or analytics services often deal with large volumes of data with varying access patterns. simplyblock’s automatic tiering can help optimize storage costs for these types of workloads.

Implementing Simplyblock in Your Organization

Implementing simplyblock is straightforward, thanks to its integration with Kubernetes and support for standard protocols (NVMe/TCP). Here’s a high-level overview of the implementation process:

  1. Deploy simplyblock in your Kubernetes cluster using the provided Kubernetes manifests or Helm charts.
  2. Configure simplyblock’s CSI (Container Storage Interface) driver to integrate with your Kubernetes environment.
  3. Define StorageClasses in Kubernetes to specify the desired performance characteristics and features for your consolidated storage volumes.
  4. Begin creating Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs) in Kubernetes, which will be fulfilled by simplyblock using the consolidated storage pool.
  5. Migrate existing data from individual EBS volumes to the new simplyblock-managed storage. This can often be done with minimal downtime using simplyblock’s snapshot and clone features.
  6. Monitor and optimize your storage usage using simplyblock’s management interfaces and Kubernetes integration.

By following these steps, you can transform your storage infrastructure into a unified, efficient, and easily manageable storage environment. The result is not optimized storage cost, but a more flexible and performant storage solution that can adapt to your organization’s changing needs.