Zenko Roadmap, what’s next for our open source multi-cloud data controller

Zenko Multi-Cloud Data Controller Our Zenko Multi-Cloud Data Controller was launched into the open source on July 11, 2017, you can read full the press release here. In a nutshell, it’s a new solution for managing data both in public cloud services and also in local storage. With Zenko under an Apache 2.0 open source […]

Written By Paul Speciale

On July 14, 2017
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Solve the challenges of large-scale data, once and for all.

Zenko Multi-Cloud Data Controller

Our Zenko Multi-Cloud Data Controller was launched into the open source on July 11, 2017, you can read full the press release here. In a nutshell, it’s a new solution for managing data both in public cloud services and also in local storage.

With Zenko under an Apache 2.0 open source license, our goal is for developers to freely use the unified S3 API and cloud storage capabilities in new applications. This means its free for use and distribution in your enterprise and embedded apps, edge devices and any “next great thing” you can think of. Zenko provides your apps with access to the AWS S3 public cloud (supported now with the launch product), and later we’ll support Microsoft Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage too (rollout details are below). The purpose is to make it easy as possible for your apps to access any cloud, even those that do not natively support the AWS S3 API. Right now, Zenko can store Bucket data locally on your machine in Docker Volumes, optionally in-memory (useful for fast transient processing such or for testing) and in our Scality RING object store for on-premises and “private cloud” style storage.

The first release of Zenko is based on our previously launched open source S3 Server Docker instance, and uses Docker Swarm to manage deployment and orchestrate HA/failover across S3 Server containers. This is documented here on the Zenko.io website, and we also are working to provide more docs on configuring public cloud integration with AWS now, and the others soon.

Looking at the bigger picture, we’ll also enhance Zenko in the coming months with some new features that will make it even more capable. This includes a new open source policy-based data management engine called Backbeat, and a metadata search engine called Clueso. Backbeat is all about enabling movement and mobility of data from on-premises Buckets to cloud Buckets through asynchronous replication. Later this year we’ll also provide Lifecycle management for auto-expiration and transitioning (tiering) objects to the cloud. Clueso lets you search across clouds using the S3 metadata attributes you can already store with your objects.

To help you plan your roadmaps with these new features in mind, here is the rollout plan for these new capabilities in the Zenko open source.

Zenko Rollout Plan

Our philosophy is to offer the features early to provide access to them as soon as possible, to get your feedback, comments and contributions on them as a community project. With that background, Zenko and its features will rollout as follows.

Zenko open source features supported at July Launch

  • Unified S3 API
  • HA/failover across two S3 containers managed by Docker Swarm
  • AWS v4 & v2 authentication (with access keys stored in a credentials file)
  • Bucket location control for object data storage in:
    • Local storage / Docker volumes
    • In-memory (fast transient processing)
    • Scality RING
    • AWS S3 (any S3 region endpoint)

In the late July 2017 time frame we will publish the following new capabilities:

  • Bucket location control and data storage in Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
  • Backbeat for Zenko to Zenko Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with local storage

In the September 2017 time frame we are targeting to deliver:

  • Clueso engine for federated searches on S3 metadata attributes (independent of data location)
  • Bucket Lifecycle for object expiration
  • Backbeat for Zenko replication to the AWS S3 cloud (CRR)

And by the end of 2017:

  • Backbeat for Zenko replication to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage replication (CRR)
  • Bucket Lifecycle for tiering to AWS S3

If you don’t see what you need, let us know what other cool features we should plan for Zenko!

GitHub is the best place for contributions and user comments and questions, thank you!

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