Cohesity SmartFiles: Beyond Scale-Out NAS

Unstructured Data Growth Challenges According to Gartner, data will grow by 800% over the next five years, of which 80% will be unstructured in the form of file shares, backups, archives, logs, media files, dev/test and analytics. Traditional network attached storage (NAS) was designed over a decade ago for traditional use cases, and without serious architectural consideration for cloud and hybrid IT environments. The reality today is that there are multiple data silos resulting in mass data fragmentation across the data center and cloud.

Challenges are not limited to the cost and management of multiple silos, or delivering hybrid cloud seamlessly. Storage costs often destroy storage budgets. Addressing compliance, regulatory, and governance requirements adds to complexity and cost. That’s why we created Cohesity SmartFiles: to go beyond traditional file and object platforms and address real data management pain with real on-premises, hybrid, and multicloud solutions.

What is Cohesity SmartFiles

Cohesity SmartFiles is the industry’s first software-defined, data-centric, multiprotocol file and object solution for the enterprise. SmartFiles is part of the Cohesity Helios data platform and goes beyond traditional scale-out NAS in terms of manageability, scale, storage efficiency, integrated applications, cybersecurity, and multi-tiered data management.

Why Is SmartFiles Smart?

Unlike traditional NAS, the Cohesity Helios data platform with SmartFiles is data-centric, not storage or infrastructure centric. This means there is no need to move data to apps as apps and data are integrated in the same platform. This removes the complexity and cost of running file ecosystem apps for file environments. Cohesity Marketplace apps and machine-learning assisted management provide intelligence and ease-of management that separates SmartFiles from traditional scale-out NAS appliances. It’s smart and with virtually effortless management, regardless of scale.

Key Benefits

Freedom of choice
Broad compatibility
Stress-free operation
Eliminate security risks
Lower storage cost
“Google-like” search

Freedom of Choice

Software-defined means customers have the freedom to choose the most appropriate hardware for any workload. It’s the freedom to match capacity, performance, and cost with workload requirements.

But this is not just about today, it’s about tomorrow. SmartFiles future-proofs unstructured data workloads on the assurance that workloads are not bound to proprietary hardware—or even the data center. SmartFiles runs in the cloud with all the functionality available on-premises. It also provides an easy on-ramp to the cloud through its native S3 protocol, along with unified NFS and SMB protocols for both on-premises and cloud environments.

Broad Compatibility

SmartFiles supports mixed operating system and hybrid cloud environments. File permissions across NFS and SMB are mapped for transparent file access from either protocol. Files and objects can be accessed simultaneously, and all data is available through S3. By supporting Windows, Linux, Unix, and cloud-native protocols, SmartFiles simplifies interoperability across complex hybrid environments.

Stress-Free Operation

SmartFiles features an intuitive interface with click-and-go simplicity, reducing operational complexity through machine learning-driven management. Data migrations are streamlined using Cohesity backup technology, while rich APIs enable automation. Cold data is automatically tiered from expensive Tier 1 storage to cost-optimized storage or the cloud based on policy.

Organizations can manage multiple clusters and locations from a single interface across cloud or on-premises deployments, whether core, edge, physical, or virtual. Data movement remains transparent to applications, simplifying traditional scale-out NAS management.

Integrated Apps

SmartFiles consolidates an entire NAS ecosystem on a single platform. Anti-virus protection, file auditing, and content search run directly on the Cohesity Helios Data Platform without requiring additional infrastructure. Organizations can detect anomalous file access, index file contents for compliance and security, and eliminate the infrastructure and operational overhead traditionally required to manage separate NAS ecosystem tools.

Eliminate Security Risks

Cybersecurity is essential for protecting unstructured data. SmartFiles simplifies security with integrated, multilayered protection designed to prevent, detect, and analyze threats.

Prevent: Immutable file system, software encryption, encryption in transit, multi-factor authentication (MFA), DataLock (WORM), and compliance with FIPS 140-1 and 140-2 standards.
Detect: Integrated antivirus capabilities help identify infected files and prevent data compromise.
Analyze: User and behavioral analytics provide insights for security monitoring and compliance.

For additional protection of sensitive data, Cohesity DataGovern delivers AI-powered governance and threat detection as a SaaS offering. It helps organizations discover sensitive data across on-premises and multicloud environments, maintain compliance, and respond quickly to ransomware and other cyber threats.

“We provide the back end for leading companies all over the world, and as an example, just one of our customers has more than 2.5 billion files, so it was imperative to enable a scaleout, software-defined file and object solution across our environment.”

— John White, Chief Innovation Officer, Expedient

Feature	Description
NFSv3, CIFS, SMB 2.x, SMB 3.0, S3, and Openstack Swift APIs	Simultaneous multiprotocol access to the same data with unified permissions. Supports NFS, SMB, and S3 API
Strict consistency	Guaranteed consistent data regardless of scale
SnapTree® snapshots and clones	Limitless and fully-hydrated snapshots for granular Cohesity Views (file systems) as well as writable snapshot clones that provide instant creation, testing, and development of View-based data sets
Fully distributed shared-nothing file system	Limitless scalability, always-on availability, non-disruptive upgrades, pay-as you-grow model
API-first design	Architecture built with an API-first design for maximum flexibility and ease of automation
Data management platform	Single platform for data protection, files, objects, dev/test, analytics, and cloud integration
Global deduplication and compression	Unparalleled storage efficiency with global deduplication, compression, and small file capacity optimization across all cluster nodes to significantly reduce data center cost and footprint
Erasure coding and replication factor	Data is protected against any individual node failure with erasure coding or replication across nodes
Global indexing and search	File and object metadata is indexed upon ingest, enabling Google-like search across all files in a cluster. Indexed search of file contents through Insight integrated app. Search across geographic locations and clouds through Cohesity Helios.
Windows Active Directory and Kerberos Integration with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)	Simplify user and group access to data utilizing credentials and permissions with Windows AD and Kerberos mechanisms. Create and manage custom Cohesity cluster administration roles for domain users and groups
MMC Integration	Snap-in for the Microsoft management console, which allows Cohesity file shares to be managed by the MMC
Quotas	Easily establish user and file system quotas with audit logs
Policy-based backup protection	Integrated data protection software and SnapTree technology is available to allow simplified data protection of objects with fully-hydrated snapshots
Quality of service (QoS)	QoS policies are provided that optimize performance for different types of workloads
Encryption	Support for data-at-rest as well as data-in-flight encryption using the industry standard 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. The platform is also FIPS 140-1 and 140-2 compliant.
Write Once Read Many (WORM)	Enables long-term retention of data that has compliance controls mandating a policy that objects cannot be modified during the lock time
Replication for disaster recovery	Built-in, granular, and secure replication services for geo redundancy
Cloud integration (CloudArchive, CloudTier, CloudReplicate)	Archive into public cloud services for long-term retention. Utilize cloud tiering for transparent capacity expansion into the cloud. Replicate into the cloud for disaster recovery and dev/test. Also, SmartFiles runs in the cloud of major cloud service providers with all of the functionality of on-premises deployments.
Integrated Apps	Support for Cohesity and third-party developed applications from the Cohesity Marketplace, along with the ability to develop custom apps using Cohesity’s App SDK. The integrated Cohesity DataGovern SaaS offering also provides sensitive data discovery, compliance management, and cyber threat response and recovery.

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