Acropolis File Services

Software Defined File Server Built for the Cloud Era

Shubhika Taneja, Product Marketing Manager

Dwayne Lessner, Sr. Technical Marketing Engineer
Agenda

Is It Time To Rethink File Services?

The Why, What and How of AFS?

AFS Deep Dive Demo

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 Why Take on Unstructured Data?

Data, Data Everywhere

Worldwide Corporate Data Growth
40000

35000
Like the physical universe,
the digital universe is
30000 large by 2020 containing
Market sizing in 2015:
nearly as many digital bits
External NAS: $6.5B
25000
as there are stars in the Opportunity even larger
Exabytes

20000 universe. It is doubling in than this unstructured

15000 size every two years. data also stored on SAN
Unstructured Date and internal storage
10000 Structured Date

5000

0
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

IDC
Is It Time to Rethink File Services?

Pains with NAS

Long time to value
Separate infrastructure
silo
Complex to deploy
Tedious to manage Not Built for the
Forklift upgrades needed Cloud Era

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Complexity At Every Step

Plan
Purchase
Deploy
Manage
Refresh
Weeks or months to plan, CLI based management is
purchase, deploy, tedious, requires
integrate and validate => specialized skills
Repeat on refresh creating an
infrastructure silo
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File Services for the Cloud Era

What Customers Value in AWS

EFS
Simple to deploy and manage
Scalable
Elastic Built for only
in-cloud
Integrated with other services
applications Nutanix brings these
together with a file
What Customers Value in NAS serving solution built for
Control and compliance the cloud era
Flexible resiliency, HA,
data protection
Enterprise grade performance
Not Built for
Advanced data reduction
the Cloud Era
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The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Is More Complete

iSCSI SMB
Eliminate another
ABS AFS datacenter silo (NAS)
and associated
complexity
Simpler
infrastructure stack
with reduced TCO
VM Services VM + Container + Block +
File Services
Before 5.0
AFS Software Defined File Server Built for the Enterprise Cloud

Simple
Deploys in minutes
PRISM based management
Scalable
Scale out/Scale up file server
solution for Windows
environment
Thousands of concurrent
connections
Enterprise Class
No single point of failure
Highly Available
Native DR
AFS Architecture

File Server 1 File Server 1

client client Minimum of 3 file
server VMs to form
a file server
cluster

File File File File File File

Server Server Server Server Server Server
1 2 1 2 1 2 Single namespace
exported

Possible to create
File Server 2 File Server 2 more than 1 file
client client
server cluster on
a Nutanix cluster

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Deployment Modes

Co-existing Standalone

Recommended for <30TB opportunities Mange file service centrally

Better utilization of existing Consider 6035c-G5 or 6155-G5
cluster resources

Same feature set for both deployments

AFS Scaling and Load Balancing

AFS Analytics Engine prescribes best action

1-Click Scaling and Load Balancing:
Both scale up and scale out possible
AFS Positioning: Key Benefits

Simple Scalable Enterprise-Class

Built on a Solid Foundation:

The Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric
Simple

Deployed in only a few clicks,

upgrades in a single click
Prism as single pane of management
Single namespace regardless of scale
Scalable

Scale capacity by adding platform

nodes when needed
Scale-up or scale-out based on your
needs
At scale:
Billions of files
10s of thousands of user sessions
Enterprise-Class

Takes advantage of underlying DSF

Intelligent tiering
Deduplication, compression, erasure
coding
Backup and DR based on block-level
snapshots / consistency groups in
DSF
Self-service file level recovery
User and share quotas
Licensing for AFS

Starter Pro Ultimate

Acropolis + AFS + AFS

File Services Standalone License Standalone License

Upgrade to Acropolis Ultimate for AFS

Highest value path as Pro needed for EC, Compression,
Deduplication
AFS Standalone License
Minimizes initial acquisition cost
AFS Use Cases
Cross Selling: Home Directories and User Profiles

Home Directory
Home Directories contain user data such as photos,
music, text files
VDI is a great target segment

Top Requirements
Capacity Performance Management
#Users x Low to Moderate Users quotas
Quota/user Intermittent Snapshots
e.g. 30GB/user x access, some Backup
2000 users = 60TB bursts, a lot of
usable DR
inactivity
Net New: Departmental Shares

Shared file storage for working groups such as

HR
Engineering, Marketing, Sales
ABC Chemicals
FileCloud Account
Previously on-prem (Netapp, EMC) or cloud (Dropbox,
Google Drive)
Marketing

Top Requirements
Sales

Capacity Performance Management

Engineering
10s 100s TB Moderate User quotas
Higher than home Snapshots
dirs Backup
DR
Net New: Active Archives and Opportunistic

Larger opportunistic file storage opportunities up to PBs in size

Active archives accessed by Windows may be a fit, especially
in Media & Entertainment
Work with SEs to qualify

Top Requirements
Capacity Performance Management
100s 1000s TB Varies Varies
AFS Target Opportunities
Go One Step Further with AFS for Your VDI Deployments

User Profiles/ Departmental

Home Directory Shares

HR
ABC Chemicals
FileCloud Account

Key Use Cases

where NAS is Marketing

used

Sales

VDI
Engineering

AFS Supports Windows oriented use cases

Eliminate the Standalone
NAS Silo for your VDI Deployments!
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What Does AFS Bring for VDI Deployments

Eliminate infrastructure silos with a single

platform for user-files and application/desktops

Simple end to end control for the virtualization

administrators from a single management pane (Prism)

Integrated solution with AD, user/share quotas and

Windows previous version support

Rich Enterprise Storage features including HA, DR

and capacity reduction
Where to Look
Scenario Look For Pitch This
End to end control to the VDI admin with
VDI Deployments, especially
Home Dirs, User Profiles and Dept Shares
Current VDI Deployments with spare
consolidated on Nutanix without the need of
cluster capacity have no
Customers barrier to adoption for AFS
external file server. Lower TCO

Simplification with easy

Current ROBO Deployments, Branch
management and consolidation in
offices especially that may be
Customers Branch offices with AFS
running VDI

Any Windows File Server Deployment Simplification with easy

Current
Scenario ( Easy pickings for us) management and consolidation on
the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
Customers Platform

File Server use cases such as Home

Directories, User Profiles, Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform offers a
New Customers Departmental Shares, Archiving consolidated solution for VM, file, block and
(Use AFS as a conversation starter container services
to get the foot into the door)
Call to Action
Any VDI conversation should also discuss AFS

Have Acropolis Ultimate customers turn on AFS (already included)

Visit nu.school on the partner portal

https://nutanix.portal.relayware.com/?eid=training

Be a Release 5.0 Pro! AOS 5.0 training

Renew your sales certification with updated Sales Academy courses
NEW! Start your SE training curriculum with Systems Engineering Academy

Nutanix AOS 5.0 Features

Nutanix Acropolis Whats News

Nutanix Acropolis Virtualization

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Resources
Datasheet:
http://go.nutanix.com/rs/031-GVQ-112/images/acropolis-file-services.pdf
Blogs:
http://next.nutanix.com/t5/Nutanix-Connect-Blog/Ten-Things-you-need-to-
know-about-Nutanix-Acropolis-File/ba-p/14524
http://next.nutanix.com/t5/Nutanix-Connect-Blog/Go-one-step-further-with-
Acropolis-File-Services-for-your-VDI/ba-p/13590
https://www.nutanix.com/2016/03/14/nutanix-advances-enterprise-cloud-
strategy-by-eliminating-requirement-for-separate-network-attached-
storage-nas/
Tech Note:
https://www.nutanix.com/go/simplifying-file-storage-with-acropolis-file-
services.html

Reimagine File Services with AFS White Paper coming soon in the next
partner newsletter
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DEMO
Thank You