As cloud and managed service providers expand their backup-as-a-service (BaaS) capabilities, a significant operational challenge arises: effectively managing numerous object storage deployments across various customer sites. Each deployment demands attention for monitoring, maintenance, and billing reconciliation, leading to complexities in scalability.
Scality has addressed this challenge with the launch of Scality Maestro, now generally available, a fleet management platform designed to streamline operations for service providers overseeing multiple Scality ARTESCA object storage installations. This platform is crafted for the large-scale needs of providers, allowing for integrated and efficient management of numerous customer deployments.
Centralised management approach
Unlike single deployment management, handling a distributed object storage infrastructure at scale requires a unified management solution. Service providers benefit from a comprehensive interface to oversee systems' health, deploy software updates, and monitor capacity use across diverse customer locations without the need for individual VPN access. As BaaS services spread across numerous sites, the need for such streamlined operational tools becomes increasingly critical.
Developed in collaboration with cloud and service provider partners, Scality Maestro is already in use and offers several key features:
- Unified health monitoring and alerts for all Scality ARTESCA deployments.
- Comprehensive management capabilities, including software and hardware updates.
- Consolidated capacity data to facilitate automated billing processes.
- An architecture that eliminates VPN requirements by ensuring data flows securely to Maestro.
- Support for enterprises using ARTESCA in distributed or branch office settings.
Enhancing data protection architecture
Maestro is also highly applicable for enterprises managing ARTESCA across multiple locations
Dominic McLouglin, CEO of Autodata, highlighted the impact of Maestro: "We manage multiple Scality ARTESCA deployments across our key customer sites in the UK and Ireland as part of our backup-as-a-service offering, and until Maestro, every one of them was independently managed - separate logins, VPN tunnels, manual update cycles, and monthly capacity reports assembled by hand. Instead, Maestro gives us a single view of the entire fleet. Software updates that consume hours of staff time can now be monitored centrally, and we can grow the fleet without adding operational headcount. We can already foresee a significant difference in running our service."
Initially targeting the SCSP and MSP sectors, Maestro is also highly applicable for enterprises managing ARTESCA across multiple locations, enhancing their data protection strategies.
Meeting the demand for scalable management
When deployment scales extend beyond a limited number of sites, conventional management tools fall short. Scality Maestro offers the crucial centralised management required for expansive operations. As Thomas Danan, Sr. Product Director at Scality, noted, “Service providers building BaaS businesses on Scality ARTESCA are managing infrastructure at a scale that demands enterprise-grade operational tooling. Maestro was built with our SCSP partners to solve the real operational problems they face every day with centralised visibility, automated management, and the billing infrastructure to run a sustainable managed service. The fact that it requires no VPN and no network reconfiguration on the customer side was a hard requirement from day one.”
Scality Maestro version 1.1 is available for service providers using ARTESCA deployments from version 4.0.3 onwards. Currently offered as an on-premises solution, a SaaS delivery model is forthcoming. Comprehensive documentation for Scality service providers can be accessed at documentation.scality.com.
As cloud and managed service providers race to deliver backup-as-a-service (BaaS) at scale, a critical operational challenge has emerged: managing tens to hundreds of individual object storage deployments spread across customer sites, each requiring monitoring, maintenance, and billing reconciliation.
Scality, a pioneer in data infrastructure software for AI-era storage at scale, today announced general availability of Scality Maestro, a fleet management platform purpose-built for service providers operating large numbers of Scality ARTESCA object storage deployments on behalf of their customers.
Managing single deployment
Managing distributed object storage infrastructure at scale is fundamentally different from managing a single deployment. Service providers need a single pane of glass to monitor health, push firmware and software updates, track capacity utilisation across all customer sites, and do so without requiring VPN tunnels into every customer environment. As BaaS offerings grow from dozens to hundreds of sites, this operational gap becomes a hard constraint on scalability.
Co-developed with cloud and service provider partners (SCSP), Scality Maestro is now in production use across customer deployments and provides service providers with:
- Centralised health monitoring and alerting across the entire Scality ARTESCA fleet
- End-to-end management down to the hardware layer, including ARTESCA software upgrades and server firmware updates
- Aggregated capacity utilisation data across all customer deployments, enabling automated pay-as-you-go billing
- Out-of-band connectivity architecture that eliminates VPN requirements, as all traffic flows from ARTESCA to Maestro, never the reverse
- Support for enterprises managing ARTESCA across branch offices or distributed edge locations
Data protection architecture
"We manage multiple Scality ARTESCA deployments across our key customer sites in the UK and Ireland as part of our backup-as-a-service offering, and until Maestro, every one of them was independently managed - separate logins, VPN tunnels, manual update cycles, and monthly capacity reports assembled by hand. Instead, Maestro gives us a single view of the entire fleet. Software updates that consume hours of staff time can now be monitored centrally, and we can grow the fleet without adding operational headcount. We can already foresee a significant difference in running our service," said Dominic McLouglin, CEO Autodata.
While Maestro was designed primarily for the SCSP and MSP market, the platform is equally well suited to enterprise organisations running ARTESCA across multiple locations, whether at the edge, in branch offices, or as part of a distributed data protection architecture.
Operational inflection point
Once deployments expand beyond a handful of sites, organisations reach an operational inflection point: tools that work well for a single site cannot efficiently manage tens or hundreds. Maestro provides the centralised management needed to operate at that scale.
“Service providers building BaaS businesses on Scality ARTESCA are managing infrastructure at a scale that demands enterprise-grade operational tooling. Maestro was built with our SCSP partners to solve the real operational problems they face every day with centralised visibility, automated management, and the billing infrastructure to run a sustainable managed service. The fact that it requires no VPN and no network reconfiguration on the customer side was a hard requirement from day one,” said Thomas Danan, Sr. Product Director, Scality.
Scality Maestro 1.1 is generally available and supports all Scality ARTESCA deployments running version 4.0.3 or later. It is currently available as an on-premises deployment, with a SaaS delivery model planned for future release. For Scality service providers, full documentation is available at documentation.scality.com.
