Enterprise Strategy Group: Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon

White
Paper

Building a Private Online File Sharing
Cloud with EMC Isilon

By Terri McClure, Senior Analyst

January 2013

This ESG White Paper was commissioned by EMC Isilon
and is distributed under license from ESG.

© 2013 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

White Paper: Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon 2

Contents
Why You Need to Focus on Files Now .......................................................................................................... 3
Warning: Your File Data has Left the Building .......................................................................................................... 3
The Imperative to Take Action ................................................................................................................................. 4
File Server Consolidation in a Mobile World ................................................................................................ 4
Public, Hybrid, and Private Cloud Models for Online File Sharing ............................................................... 5
Comparing Public, Hybrid, and Private Clouds for Online File Sharing ........................................................ 6
Public Cloud File Sharing .......................................................................................................................................... 6
Hybrid Cloud ............................................................................................................................................................. 7
Private Cloud ............................................................................................................................................................ 7
Storage System Considerations for Private Cloud File Sharing ................................................................................ 8
How EMC Isilon Meets the OFS Challenge ................................................................................................... 9
The Bigger Truth ......................................................................................................................................... 11

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Why You Need to Focus on Files Now
File data has been the neglected afterthought of the IT organization. IT managers typically spend their time dealing
with business applications and associated data—data which is typically stored on internal disks, DAS or SAN. That is
because these business applications keep the lights on, making sure the bills get paid, orders get shipped, and
invoices are tracked, while file data is typically associated with individuals or line of business applications. IT is often
involved in some level of decision making and support when it comes to how that data will be stored and managed,
but often times, responsibility for file sharing and support is decentralized.
That’s why, until recently, primary storage for file data today can be found in three places;
 In the data center, either on specialty NAS systems, or Windows or Linux servers
 Scattered across departmental specialty NAS systems, or Windows or Linux servers
 On employees’ PCs and laptops
But with the influx of consumer devices such as tablets and smartphones into the enterprise, IT needs to pay much
more attention to file data. These devices are why there is now a fourth place that files can be found: in consumer
file sharing services.

Warning: Your File Data has Left the Building
Users are storing business files in personal file sharing accounts in order to access them from multiple mobile
devices, such as their tablets and smartphones as well as their business devices such as PCs, Macs, or laptops. In
fact, ESG recently conducted research into IT’s perception of just how widespread the problem, often called rogue
application use or shadow IT, is, and we found it to be very widespread. A whopping 70% of the IT managers
surveyed by ESG know or believe that users have business data in their own personal file sharing accounts (see
Figure 1).1
Figure 1. Use of Non-Corporate Approved Online File Sharing Solutions
Regardless of whether or not your company has a corporate account, do you know if end-
users in your organization are using non-IT approved Online File Sharing and Collaboration
solutions? (Percent of respondents, N=499)

Don't know, 1%
No, I do not believe
that end-users are Yes, I know that end-
using their own users are using their
individual accounts own individual
that are not endorsed accounts that are not
by IT, 28% endorsed by IT, 36%

Perhaps, I suspect
that end-users are
using their own
individual accounts
that are not endorsed
by IT, but can't be
sure, 34%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2013.

1
Source: ESG Research Report, Corporate Online File Sharing and Collaboration Market Trends, November 2012. All other ESG research charts
and references in this white paper are taken from this research report, unless otherwise noted.



IT managers have been trying to keep data under control by discouraging or even setting formal policies against use
of personal file sharing accounts for business data—but more than a third, or 36%, of the companies with formal
policies against use of personal accounts report that they know employees are using personal accounts, and 21% of
those with policies in place suspect rogue usage. The news is worse for companies that don’t have formal polices
and just discourage use of personal accounts: Thirty five percent know about and 51% suspect rogue usage. Mind
you, these numbers are likely low, since some IT managers are probably reticent to admit even in a blind survey
that they know or suspect that employees are using personal accounts despite policies and discouragement.

The Imperative to Take Action
The danger of these personal accounts is the threat of data leakage, opening the network to external threats, and
the lack of IT control and visibility into the sharing environment. When an employee stores data in a personal file
sharing account, IT has no visibility into what data is stored there and what devices it may be shared on. And there
is no audit trail of who else has access to the data. But perhaps most disturbing is the fact that if the employee
leaves the company, the data in the online file sharing account more or less “leaves” with that person. It is in their
personal account in a cloud service, and probably synced to their laptop, desktop, or cached on a tablet. IT has no
visibility as to what data left with the employee.
Granted, the threat of data loss has always been a challenge for IT, but it has always been a conscious decision by
an employee to take data, either by copying it onto a USB stick or a CD. With personal file sharing accounts, the
threat is heightened: Data leakage becomes the default behavior—it just happens. And since the data could be on
multiple devices that are accessed by multiple people, there is no accountability whatsoever.
At this point, it is not a question of whether there will be a major data loss event associated with the use of
personal file sharing accounts, it is a matter of when. That is why IT needs to act sooner rather than later to build a
file sharing environment that supports the mobility requirements of the modern enterprise without compromising
corporate security by opening the network to outside threats. End-users are doing it without IT—it is time for IT to
change the equation and get back in control of corporate data.

File Server Consolidation in a Mobile World
Because of the decentralized nature of file data, there are big challenges associated with gaining control of the file
sharing environment. A common byproduct of both the cloud and consumerization movements is a
democratization of the decision making process around technology use. IT can no longer dictate what technology is
used across the enterprise, and employees and departments can quickly find alternatives to the solutions provided
by corporate IT. In a decentralized file sharing environment, the challenge is magnified: Departments have already
had some level of autonomy in decision making. That is why it is important for IT to take a well-planned approach
to solving the mobile file sharing challenge, including steps to:
 Team with the business unit to evaluate solutions that meet individual needs. With the broad availability
and easy-to-deploy nature of alternative file sharing services, the old command and control approach is just
not going to work. The business unit knows what functionality is required—how much project management
and workflow functionality may be required, how strict the controls and auditability of the sharing
environments needs to be.
 Pay lots of attention to end-user ease of use... There are almost no barriers or switching costs for the
employees to use or keep using alternative file sharing solutions. As important as administrative
functionality and controls are, end-user ease of use is just as, if not more, important. If the solution you
provide is not as easy to use as the consumer solutions, you will have challenges with adoption.
 …and training. Many business-focused services have richer functionality and are much better suited for
collaborative environments than consumer solutions, but the very nature of the richer functionality makes
them a little more complex to use. Many solutions now do a nice job of balancing functionality and ease of
use, but they are still not “Dropbox simple” and that is what consumers are used to. Once end-users are
trained on the new and richer functionality and understand the productivity benefits, they often see the



light and embrace it. ESG has heard time and again as users train on business solutions “at first I didn’t like
it because it wasn’t as easy and intuitive as Dropbox, but once I used it and realized how much more I could
do, I loved it.”
 Leverage the viral effect. That is how the consumer solutions got into your enterprise, and that is how you
will get them out. Once users are on board, trained, and productive, make sure everyone knows it. Publish
best practices and productivity success stories. Make sure everyone knows the benefits of using the
advanced features you just introduced that are lacking in their personal consumer solutions—for example,
how much easier life can be when working on projects and managing files using the full text search,
embedded comment threads, shared version tracking, and file locking features you have in the new
solution.
 Understand that one solution may not meet all needs. Some teams have a need for tracking IP while
others may need to lock down documents in deal rooms, and other teams may just have requirements for
basic sharing of files across multiple devices. There is no one-size-fits-all solution—often, the greater the
security functionality, the greater the cost and the administrative burden (for both IT and the end-user).
That complexity could easily turn off those end-users that just need basic file sharing across devices and
drive them back toward using personal accounts. The most cost-effective and stickiest way to meet the
mobile file sharing dilemma is to build a service catalog that has tiers of solutions—some simple and basic,
some complex yet very secure.
 If building a private cloud, ensure your storage infrastructure can be quickly and easily scaled. The online
file sharing area is one place where IT needs to be especially cautious about injecting any friction into the
business process. If it takes too long to add capacity or if it is too painful to add collaborators or clients, it is
much too easy for a group or department to go to a service provider. Additionally, with centralization of
departmental file servers and consolidation of capacity that used to be on desktop and laptop hard drives,
capacity planning and growth will be less predictable and likely faster than IT teams have experienced in the
past. Therefore, the infrastructure you build on is critical to your success.

Public, Hybrid, and Private Cloud Models for Online File Sharing
Public and hybrid cloud solutions for online file sharing are similar in many ways, while pure, private file sharing
cloud deployments have significantly different requirements (see Table 1). The differences between public, private,
and hybrid are simply where pieces of the infrastructure, such as the servers and storage capacity, are housed, and
who owns and controls those pieces. In a public cloud scenario, all equipment is owned and controlled by the
service provider. In a hybrid cloud scenario, the customer organization keeps some pieces on-premises. For
example, an organization may keep its encryption keys on a local server, separate from the encrypted files stored in
the cloud. And in a private scenario, the equipment is owned and controlled by the client, while the application may
be owned and controlled by the service provider or the client.



Table 1. Public, Hybrid, and Private Cloud for Online File Sharing Comparison

Characteristics Public Cloud Hybrid Cloud Private Cloud
Hosted by service Hosted by service
Application hosting On-premises
provider provider
Controlled by service Controlled by service May be controlled by the
Application control
provider * provider * client or a service provider*
Client owns, runs, and
maintains some
Service provider owns,
equipment; service Client owns, runs, and
Equipment ownership runs, and maintains all
provider owns, runs, and maintains all equipment
equipment
maintains some
equipment
Client licenses software on Client licenses software
Typical licensing plan a per-seat, subscription on a per-seat, Multiple models available
basis subscription basis
* Client may control some limited configuration settings and controls user administration functions


Comparing Public, Hybrid, and Private Clouds for Online File Sharing
When evaluating a full public cloud implementation, a private cloud, or a hybrid cloud implementation, IT
professionals should consider the following advantages and disadvantages of each approach. There are tradeoffs in
performance, administration, and equipment overhead with each approach, as well as security considerations.

Public Cloud File Sharing
In a public cloud deployment, the service provider is responsible for all equipment procurement, maintenance, and
administration, as well as application administration and data protection. The client (or enterprise) is responsible
for user and account administration.
Advantages of public cloud file sharing:
 Service provider absorbs almost all associated costs (i.e., real estate, staffing, hardware maintenance,
software patching, etc.); service provider’s fees take advantage of economies of scale
 Service provider is responsible for data availability, file backup and disaster recovery
 Configuration and implementation are relatively simple
Disadvantages of public cloud file sharing:
 Customer organization is dependent on service provider for file security
 Performance may be degraded as users wait for files to upload or download
 File sizes may be limited by the cloud service provider’s terms
 Customer organization is dependent on service provider for rapid response to unanticipated outages
There can be significant costs savings achieved on both the capex and opex fronts leveraging the economies of scale
that an online file sharing service can provide. The tradeoff is a lack of control over the infrastructure. Customer
organizations are entirely dependent on the service provider when it comes to maintaining data availability or
responding quickly to unplanned outages. Customer organizations should asses the service provider’s data
availability, business continuity and disaster recovery practices to ensure their needs will be met.



Hybrid Cloud
In a hybrid deployment, the service provider is responsible for some equipment procurement, while the client also
procures in-house components. Both share some management burden for the equipment (though the service
provider typically absorbs the brunt of the work). Application maintenance and administration falls to the service
provider, while user and account administration falls to the enterprise.
Advantages of hybrid cloud file sharing:
 Latency problems may be mitigated with local cache
 With sufficient local capacity, enterprise is typically not limited in file sizes
 Enterprise may maintain key security controls locally
 Enterprises may control what data can go to the cloud and what data stays behind the firewall
 Customer organization may rely on service provider for file-based back-up and disaster recovery relating to
the set of files stored in the cloud
Disadvantages of hybrid cloud file sharing:
 Customer organization absorbs a portion of the associated costs
 Configuration and implementation is more complex to deploy and maintain
 Synchronization and data integrity problems may arise as applications access files from both locations
The added complexity of a hybrid cloud solution should not be underestimated, but can be eased somewhat by
cloud storage service providers who integrate tools (such as Active Directory to replicate permissions) and provide a
common control plane for setting policies across the on-premises and in-cloud environments.

Private Cloud
In a private cloud, the enterprise is responsible for most if not all equipment procurement, operation, and
maintenance. The application may be delivered as a service in which the service provider has some compute cycles
in the cloud that run the application (commonly referred to as the control plane) in the cloud, while all data
remains in-house. In this case, the software is often licensed under a subscription model by seats, and the service
provider maintains and administers the application while the enterprise handles user and account administration.
The alternative model is one in which the software is licensed on an annual basis in an enterprise software model,
and deployed in the data center. In this case, the enterprise handles all software maintenance and administration
as well as user administration.
Advantages of private cloud file sharing:
 Local file sharing eliminates latency concerns associated with leveraging public cloud
 Enterprise is typically not limited in file sizes
 Enterprise maintains key security controls locally, can integrate with in-house security processes (i.e., key
management, etc.)
 Data stays behind the firewall
 Enterprise controls and is accountable for data protection policies and procedures
Disadvantages of private cloud file sharing:
 Customer organization absorbs all the associated costs
 Configuration and implementation is more complex to deploy and maintain



There is one more caveat when deploying a private file sharing cloud. The underlying storage infrastructure plays a
starring role—it has a direct impact on the user experience, and therefore it must be carefully planned out.

Storage System Considerations for Private Cloud File Sharing
According to ESG research, the growth and management of unstructured data is already the biggest storage
challenge facing IT today (see Figure 2).2 Bringing all the file data associated with departmental servers and online
file sharing into the data center will certainly magnify the problem. Of course, file server consolidation can help
reduce costs by simply reducing the number of file sharing systems (Windows and Linux file servers as well as
specialty NAS systems) deployed in general and getting better utilization—but if you are bringing all this endpoint
data into the data center, it is important that the backend storage platform is the right one for the job or the effort
to get back control over your file data could backfire.
Figure 2. Top Ten Biggest Storage Challenges
In general, what would you say are your organization’s biggest challenges in terms of its
storage environment? Which would you characterize as the primary storage challenge
for your organization? (Percent of respondents, N=418)

Rapid growth and management of unstructured data 15%
40%

Data protection (e.g., backup/recovery, etc.) 11%
39%

Hardware costs 10%
39%

Running out of physical space 7%
25% Primary
storage
Need to support growing virtual server environments 5%
25% challenge

Data migration 4% All storage
25% challenges
Staff costs 5%
20%
Management, optimization & automation of data 5%
placement 19%

Lack of skilled staff resources 6%
19%

Discovery, analysis and reporting of storage usage 5%
17%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
One of the biggest challenges with the overall storage environment in recent years has been the time it takes to
respond to requests to provision users or capacity. With the ubiquity of online file sharing solutions, departments
are not going to wait for IT to provision more storage to launch a new project or bring new collaborators into an
existing project. They will just go subscribe to a service. So having a fast time to provision is a key factor in choosing
a storage system.
The next issue is availability. PC and laptop users in a sync and share environment may not notice an outage,
because most solutions sync all the data on the local device and private cloud. But more and more end-users are
accessing data from mobile devices (i.e., smartphones and tablets) especially your executive staff. OFS solutions do
not sync all the files on these devices because there just isn’t enough capacity on the mobile devices to do that;

2
Source: ESG Research Report, 2012 Storage Market Survey, November 2012.



these devices depend on the data being available 24 x 7, therefore the storage system must be available 24 x 7 x
365, even during upgrades, lease rollovers, or site outages. Remember: These are all the files related to user home
directories and group projects, so if employees can’t get to them, they can’t work.
These first two points address those parts of the storage experience that affect the end-users, and since end-users
can switch so easily, they are the top two criteria. But peripherally related to the user experience are performance
and capacity. Of course when sharing files over the internet, performance will vary based on connectivity. But IT
needs to be very aware that the constant syncing of files with desktop and laptop clients and the increased
frequency of access from mobile devices will put greater demand on the file storage infrastructure. That creates
three areas where special attention needs to be paid to the storage infrastructure—first, it must scale throughput
with capacity (scale-out) so that bandwidth does not create a bottleneck. Second, it must load balance and tune
itself in an automated manner because storage administrators can’t be in reactive performance tuning and load
balancing mode as that would take too many administrative cycles to keep up. And third, it must scale to support
the higher capacity demands associated with a file server consolidation effort combined with the consolidation of
endpoint device capacity. Additionally—and policies will vary largely by company—many companies are allowing
employees to partition off a part of the online file sharing service for personal data in order to encourage adoption
of the business-sanctioned file sharing solution. That means providing capacity for personal photo and multimedia
files. The trade-off of managing extra capacity for getting corporate data back in-house is worth it to many
organizations.
Then we have the considerations that do not directly impact the end-user experience, but will significantly impact
IT. Having a system that scales performance with capacity, scales to massive capacity, and provides automated
tuning and load balancing will reduce the footprint (by requiring fewer systems), help increase utilization (by
consolidating on a single shared resource and eliminating storage stovepipes) and reduce the administrative
burden (by requiring fewer systems and implementing automation). In addition, there is still more efficiency that
can be gained through tiering.
The bulk of our employees are digital pack rats, and the bulk of their files are stored because they don’t want or
need to delete them or they feel that someday down the road they may need them. Storage administrators
certainly don’t know what files can or should be deleted from these accounts, so they cannot take action. That
means these systems are storing lots of stagnant data. While the system needs to support new performance
demands for some data, policies are required to facilitate tiering to cost-effective storage as use of files becomes
stale. Having these policies in place with a tiered storage system that has a dense, low performance, and less
expensive storage tier is critical to supporting online file sharing environments efficiently. You may have tens,
hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of users that need some files fast, likely all of them at the start of the
day, and those require your high-performance storage. The rest does not, and that is the bulk of your data—so
tiering can help reduce the footprint and overall cost of the hardware infrastructure.

How EMC Isilon Meets the OFS Challenge
EMC’s Isilon offering is largely recognized as the “father of scale-out storage.” It pioneered the concept of
commercially viable scale-out storage appliances that are easy to use and applicable to enterprise business use
cases.
Because of its scale-out nature, the EMC Isilon platform can scale performance with capacity. As new nodes are
added, they are absorbed into the platform, which automatically load balances and tunes, so storage admins do not
have to spend their time creating LUNs, allocating storage, and then migrating data—it just happens. And it also
supports tiering with Smartpools, so newer, active data can be on higher performance nodes while older, static
data can be stored on dense and efficient nodes. And it scales to tens of PBs of capacity (144 nodes) that are all
managed within a single namespace. This all combines to make EMC Isilon an ideal platform for consolidation.
Regarding time to provision new capacity, EMC Isilon’s scale-out nature gives it granular scale—nodes can be added
as required, for just-in-time scalability, while the push-button provisioning brings capacity online quickly. And it is a



high-availability system that can withstand up to four drive or node failures and offers remote replication so it can
be set up to even withstand a site failure.
Supporting a private cloud for online file sharing and collaboration is a two headed monster—both the end-user
experience and the administrative experience must be addressed, or end-users will just use their own private
accounts. EMC Isilon’s strong commitment to designing for performance, scale, time to scale, and availability make
it a well suited platform for supporting a private corporate online file sharing initiative and ensuring the end-user
experience can be a good one. And it ensures the storage administrative end of the equation with a scalable,
automated, efficient platform for consolidation.



The Bigger Truth
It is time to start paying closer attention to your file data. You may not depend on file data to keep the lights on,
but your employees depend on it to get their day to day work done. Not only that, but for many companies, their
core intellectual property is file-based departmental data—i.e., engineering design files, contracts, graphics,
blueprints, formulas, or just conceptual documents that have yet to progress to design phase but could hold
tremendous value for the company over time. Do you really want that data in someone’s personal file sharing
account? To be easily accessible to an employee that is no longer with the company? Do you want to expose your
corporate network to untrusted cloud-based applications? That is what is happening today. It is time to pay
attention and get control over file data by providing a corporately sanctioned solution that supports your
requirements for security and control of data. You can accomplish that by building your own file sharing cloud—but
it needs to be built on the right infrastructure.
Facing accelerated data growth driven by file server consolidation efforts and the need to support mobile users,
scale-out platforms, such as those offered by EMC Isilon, are a necessity. You just can’t do this with a traditional
storage approach.


20 Asylum Street | Milford, MA 01757 | Tel: 508.482.0188 Fax: 508.482.0218 | www.esg-global.com

Enterprise Strategy Group: Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon

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Enterprise Strategy Group: Building a Private Online File Sharing Cloud with EMC Isilon