What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Qumulo is primarily in healthcare imaging and media entertainment. It is the file-heavy workload for enterprises, and it is used extensively in healthcare. One of the companies I worked with, NTT, manages a lot of healthcare infrastructures.
A specific example of how Qumulo was used in one of those healthcare scenarios is that we used it extensively for enterprise workloads, particularly healthcare imaging.
We used Qumulo for snapshots and replication as well, and real-time analytics per file.
What is most valuable?
The best features Qumulo offers include linear scale-out, real-time analytics, multi-protocol cloud-native replication for AWS and Azure, API-driven management, and snapshots and replication, which are particularly useful in the healthcare industry and other sectors in media and entertainment.
Real-time analytics in Qumulo help me see what is going on within the environment, keeping me ahead of things.
You can use Qumulo SQS, cluster deployment, and node expansion, which are excellent for scaling out if needed.
Qumulo has positively impacted my organization by making it much easier. The snapshots and replication, along with the cloud-native replication running on HP and Dell, work on Azure and AWS, which helps considerably, especially with those being the two biggest cloud-driven systems.
What needs improvement?
Although Qumulo has been around for several years and I think they have a very good product, I cannot think of anything offhand that needs improvement. I appreciate that I can use it to check whether copies for migrations are saturating any clusters using Qumulo API scripts. As time progresses, all things improve, but nothing stands out as needing urgent attention.
Any improvements I might suggest would be nitpicking from an individual perspective. However, looking at how it has simplified processes, I appreciate the snapshots, replication, and API-driven management it offers within a cloud environment. Overall, it is a solid tool that works very well on-premises and in cloud environments.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started working with Qumulo almost four years ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Qumulo is very stable. Stability is a must, or else it defeats the purpose of using it. I can confidently say it is highly stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Qumulo has exceptional scalability. It scales out, which is one of the reasons it is gaining popularity and competes well in the unstructured data market, much in the way Isilon does. For storage admins or those involved with disaster recovery, the scalability model is critical, as every node adds performance and capacity without any single metadata controller, eliminating performance bottlenecks within the head node. This linear scale allows for multi-petabyte workloads, which is essential for both media and entertainment as well as healthcare's image management.
How are customer service and support?
My experience with Qumulo's customer support is that they are quick to respond. Being relatively new in this arena, they must ensure their customer support is solid to compete with established players in NetApp. My feedback is that their customer support is excellent.
I would rate Qumulo's customer support a 10. They quickly respond to my inquiries, and I have direct access to Qumulo engineers, which is invaluable. These professionals possess deep expertise in cloud deployments and NAS migrations, ensuring that I am speaking with knowledgeable individuals. If they do not have an answer readily available, they perform the necessary research to assist.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Isilon, which I worked with for a considerable amount of time. It was a substantial NAS file solution, and I can easily see the parallels between Isilon and Qumulo. When Qumulo's sales team first introduced me to the product, I recognized its similarity to Dell EMC's Isilon, leading me to learn that the makers of Qumulo were the same individuals behind Isilon.
What was our ROI?
Although I cannot share specific metrics related to return on investment, I can say that Qumulo made workloads much easier, especially within AWS. I believe this also applies to Azure. The capabilities for handling high throughput unstructured workloads and executing petabyte-scale migrations are paramount for media and entertainment or healthcare, where they can reduce the burden of long nights spent on migrations.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Qumulo, I evaluated other options including NetApp, specifically NetApp ONTAP, and Pure Storage's FlashBlade, which were both good and I have no complaints about them.
What other advice do I have?
I believe Qumulo is great for a storage engineer because it allows me to validate migration throughput, which is part of the real-time analytics. That helps considerably during migrations. I frequently monitor hot directories and optimize cutover, particularly with Windows, and handle petabyte-scale migrations. I also track throughput metrics including read and write per node, per client, and directory, along with protocol throughput for NFS or SMB.
Regarding Qumulo's AI capabilities, I think they are doing a very good job with governance and security.
The accuracy and reliability of Qumulo's AI output are great, especially when looking at AI infrastructure storage. It helps with cyber recovery in healthcare due to the growing ransomware issue. I think they are doing a fine job, and as AI quickly advances in various directions, I feel Qumulo will get even better with it. Their AI is extremely useful for migration engineering, ransomware detection, performance tuning, and determining hot file and non-directed detections. It provides insights on client behavior and predicts performance bottlenecks, giving engineers a clear perspective, along with tiering recommendations. Overall, their AI is solid and strong, and I anticipate they will grow even stronger with further developments in AI.
My advice for others looking into using Qumulo is to ensure that it fits their needs, especially in media entertainment or large cloud environments that require handling petabytes of data with the ability to scale out. It is crucial to have a clear understanding of your requirements, particularly in environments like AWS or Azure. I am unsure about Google, but I know Azure is supported along with AWS. Therefore, if you are part of a media entertainment company or healthcare organization dealing with large quantities of images, it is worth considering how Qumulo integrates with your on-premises, hybrid, or cloud infrastructure. I give Qumulo a review rating of 9.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)