Cloud Native Qumulo: Pay-as-you-Go Subscription

Qumulo is a distributor system that represents names based on similar tools. We had a few petabytes of data, and certain application teams were working with it during the rollout to understand what we wanted to use it for. It is basically set up for some of the database and application teams.

Qumulo has improved the way my organization functions in several ways. One of the biggest improvements was authentication, which is a security feature for SMB and FTP. We set up the clusters for Qumulo, and the main spaces are accessed seamlessly for Windows and Linux, which we were using it for. That layer of authentication was great. Depending on who you are working with, we were using either standard LDAP or another directory. I work with a number of different compute end users in connecting the data files. For example, with it being a NAS, we were able to move beyond traditional NAS limitations. Different groups could access these files and authenticate through Active Directory, Windows, Mac, or Linux, and the security feature really helped a lot as far as authentication.

The most valuable feature in Qumulo is the scaling feature, as Qumulo file data platform is optimized for scale, so we could support petabytes of data, billions of files, millions of operations, and thousands of users.

The creators of Qumulo were the ones who created Isilon, and I had a conversation with them, so any of the features within Isilon may need tweaking, but I think they resolved it here. In the year that I worked with it, I did not see anything that I had an issue with. The security is great, and it works with cloud technologies, being a hands-based tool, so you can use it with AWS or Microsoft Azure. It programs very easily. There are REST APIs, and there is a cloud connection. The management and program layer is made up of three capabilities: API, the command line, and a visual interface. In the year that I worked with it and brought it in, I think it has been effective.

The only thing I would like to see added to Qumulo is for the interface to improve visually, more in line with vCenter, but that is just my thought. Overall, I appreciate it.

I have been using Qumulo for about a year. Qumulo is an application that is now owned by HP, and I was working with HP for a contract for a year, so I was involved with the implementation of it and also managing it.

I would rate the stability of Qumulo as a nine. It did not have any issues off the top.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the scalability of Qumulo as a nine. I really would. I remember the version we used was 2.1 for Windows. I would give it a nine. I was really impressed with it as soon as I saw it, and it immediately made me think of Isilon. It is really scalable and easy to use for our end users. You can lock down files for a particular individual to use.

I would rate their technical support as a ten, as they are very quick to respond. They respond via email or phone calls, working with the individuals who are implementing it and how it would work with our regular users who will call. They respond rather quickly. For me, it is a ten, and I do not believe any of the application team owners had too many problems.

The initial deployment of Qumulo is actually pretty straightforward. We worked with the Qumulo team, and this was an individual company that HP purchased, so they brought it in, set everything up, and walked us through it. They explained that it takes some effort, and of course, we had to set up the security on our end for them to be able to access the setup things on the servers. After that, they walked us through what they were doing and how to use it, so it is pretty straightforward.

I have seen a return on investment with Qumulo. With a particular database and application team users, they were happy with it, the access they had, and how they can lock down files. There is a main manager of Qumulo within the groups, and you can set it up. Qumulo is a revenue competitor with Isilon, NetApp, Ampere Stewart, and PowerScale, so this is HP's purchase to compete with those particular companies. They are pretty happy with it rolling out in-house, and they intend to expand it to other groups. I appreciate what I am seeing; it is a great tool.

I have plans to increase the usage of Qumulo in the future. We have brought it in to work with specific teams or test groups and test users, seeing how they enjoy it and how they feel about it. We have not had any complaints when we rolled it out. In certain instances, with AWS users, we have had to bring in a few kinks, maybe connectivity issues, that were resolved. It is a new rollout, but we intend to expand it in-house.

I was not involved on the pricing side of Qumulo, but with HP bringing it in, my thought is they see a great deal of potential for it as it is competing with Dell EMC and NetApp in this area. So they felt that purchasing this company would make them quite competitive.

My advice for someone who would use Qumulo is to probably go to their site, do some research, and communicate with some of the individuals or online salespeople to give you an idea. There are probably some guides you can obtain. I think a lot of admins would appreciate this tool, as it has the API and tools to work with the cloud, and the support team is pretty solid. You can create SMB shares and NFS shares, and it works with AD and LDAP identity services. I would say to reach out to human level support, go to their website, and do a little research on it. I think they would appreciate it.

Overall, I would rate Qumulo a nine. I appreciate that it does snapshots, and you could use replication. It works with Qumulo shift and works with Amazon S3. The object store replication enables any of Qumulo file data platforms to treat a cloud object storage service as Amazon S3 as a suitable replication target, so users can copy from Qumulo namespace to a cloud store. That is great for storage, and it has quotas to enable users to control the growth of any of the subsets. I think it is something that anyone in AWS and the cloud technologies would appreciate. The file system is expandable, grows quickly, and has failure recovery. So it is a great application. I would advise anyone who is interested in it to contact the support team, and they can set up a meeting, such as a Zoom session, and walk them through it by sharing screens to give them an idea of it. HP purchased Qumulo to compete with EMC's Isilon and NetApp. So it is a solid tool. I work with both of those solutions, and what I am seeing immediately reminded me of Isilon as soon as I saw it, so I knew what was going on there. My overall rating for Qumulo is nine out of ten.