STHome ORAGE MANAGING THE INFORMATION THAT DRIVES THE ENTERPRISE Castagna: Big storage cooking up in labs Toigo: Hyper- SNAPSHOT 1 EDITOR’S NOTE / CASTAGNA consolidation the future Need for more Data storage capacity driving growing faster than Object storage squeezing out NAS most NAS purchases capacity … for now Snapshot 1: Capacity driving most NAS CLOUD BACKUP STORAGE REVOLUTION / TOIGO purchases Tap the cloud to Hyper-consolidated Cloud alternatives ease backup burdens is the future to local backup Snapshot 2: NFS and 10 Gig pre- ferred for new NAS SNAPSHOT 2 HOT SPOTS / SINCLAIR Hadoop’s role in big data storage Users favor venerable When simple storage NFS and 10 Gig for isn’t so simple Sinclair: Simple storage not so new NAS systems simple Matchett: SayEverything hi you need to to the transforma- HADOOP READ-WRITE / MATCHETT tional cloud know about object storage Big data requires The sun rises on About us Object storage is moving out of the cloud to big storage transformational nudge NAS out of enterprise file storage cloud storage services MAY 2016, VOL. 15, NO. 3 STORAGE • MAY 2016 1 EDITOR’S LETTER RICH CASTAGNA Home Castagna: Big storage cooking up in labs Toigo: Hyper- Data storage Not to be confused with bitcoins, each of these coins consolidation (de.eloped at the Uni.ersity of Southampton in the UK) the future growing faster is said to be capable of holding 360 TB of data on a disk Object storage that appears to be only a bit larger than a quarter. That’s a squeezing out NAS than capacity lot of data in a small space, and it makes that 32 GB USB flash dri.e on your keychain seem pretty puny. Snapshot 1: Future storage media may store Capacity driving petabytes for eons, but the capacity According to the Research and Markets press release, most NAS battle is happening now. here’s how they did it: purchases Cloud alternatives “ The femtosecond laser encodes information in five to local backup dimensions. The first three dimensions of X, Y and Z Snapshot 2: denote the nano-grating’s location within the coin, while NFS and 10 Gig pre- JUST ABOUT A year ago, I got all jazzed about a new disco.- the 4th and 5th dimension exist on the birefringence ferred for new NAS ery that could turn DNA into a storage medium. That was patterns of the nano-gratings.” Hadoop’s role in pretty cool—the stuff of life getting turned into the equi.- big data storage alent of a 21st century floppy disk, but with a lot more Well, sure, if you’re going to resort to using birefrin- capacity and e.en more intriguing scenarios. Scientists gence patterns and nanogratings, then that kind of capac- Sinclair: Simple storage not so speculated that a mere gram of DNA could potentially ity in that small of a space is no surprise. (Confession: I simple hold 2 TB of data. Not bad for a medium that until now ha.e no idea what birefringence patterns and nanograt- only handled mundane tasks like determining the color ings are.) Matchett: Say hi to the transforma- of our eyes and whether or not we were going to lose our All those terabytes on a small coin are pretty impres- tional cloud hair e.entually. si.e, but what’s e.en more staggering is the predicted life About us Now the lab coat set has come up with another in- expectancy of this form of data storage media: 13.8 billion genious alternati.e to boring old magnetic data storage years. That’s about the current age of the uni.erse! Sure, media or stolid solid state. In news reported by a number that number is theoretical, but e.en if it’s only a measly of sources, including Research and Markets, the arri.al one billion years, I’m impressed. I just hope I’m around to of “quartz coin data storage” has been widely heralded. check on the accuracy of that forecast. STORAGE • MAY 2016 3 Home If you’re starting to think about reconfiguring your same—or better—performance can be achie.ed with far Castagna: Big data center to house a lot of little quartz coins, you might fewer flash de.ices. So the net-net there is better perfor- storage cooking want to slow down a bit. I don’t expect WD or Seagate are mance and a smaller capacity purchase. up in labs likely to be stamping out quartz coin dri.es any time soon. Tape—you know, that type of data storage media that’s Toigo: Hyper- But maybe you don’t really need all that extra capacity been declared dead umpteen times in the past decade— consolidation anyway. could also be making a difference due to its generous stor- the future age capacities absorbing some of the capacity pre.iously Object storage destined for disk. squeezing out NAS HDD CAPACITIES ON THE DECLINE Some market research firms ha.e reported that the total Snapshot 1: Capacity driving hard disk capacity recently sold is down from pre.ious CLEAR OUT ROTTEN STORAGE most NAS periods. For example, TrendFocus noted that total HDD Veritas’ recent (and oddly named) Global Databerg Report purchases capacity shipped declined sharply from about mid-2014 to declared that only 15% of the data a typical company has Cloud alternatives the middle of 2015. If you think that cloud and flash are stashed away on its storage systems is business-critical to local backup responsible for that dip and are filling the gap, that doesn’t stuff. And the report called 52% of the stored information Snapshot 2: appear to be entirely true. “dark data” because its .alue was unknown. The rest of the NFS and 10 Gig pre- What’s more likely is that storage managers are finally data (33%) is described as “redundant, obsolete or tri.ial,” ferred for new NAS trying to get the upper hand in the struggle to control data or ROT—definitely one of the best acronyms I’.e seen in Hadoop’s role in storage media capacity. And with new capacity require- some time. big data storage ments looming with big data analytics and IoT apps, it’s I don’t really know how accurate Veritas’ numbers are, kind of a now-or-ne.er proposition: Take control or take but I bet that they’re at least in the ballpark for most com- Sinclair: Simple storage not so co.er. panies. In our most recent purchasing sur.ey, respondents simple Our storage purchasing sur.eys re.eal that storage indicated that they manage an a.erage of 1.4 petabytes of buyers ha.e been better at planning ahead o.er the past data on all forms of data storage media, including disks, Matchett: Say hi to the transforma- six or se.en years by buying bigger arrays and then filling tape, flash, cloud, optical and whate.er else you can lay a tional cloud in with additional dri.es as needed. Similarly, while flash few bits and bytes on. If 33% of that is indeed ROT, that About us is likely taking up all the slack of slumping hard disk dri.e means companies are paying for the care and feeding of (HDD) sales, it’s also likely that solid state is affecting about half a petabyte of junk. storage buying habits. In the past, to squeeze out required Perhaps data centers ha.e begun to get the ROT out. performance, a storage array might’.e been configured Some of the newer and smarter storage systems make with dozens of short-stroked 15K rpm disks, but now the the chore of finding and deleting rotten data easier by STORAGE • MAY 2016 4 Home pro.iding more intelligence about the stored information. demands and the apparent downturn in disk capacity sales Castagna: Big It’s also possible that tape, our fa.orite dead data storage side by side, you ha.e to conclude that we’re all getting at storage cooking media, has been resurrected for archi.al purposes, and least a little better at what we sa.e and what we dump. And up in labs both dark data and ROT ha.e found a final resting place. we’d better get used to it—it looks like selecti.e sa.ing will Toigo: Hyper- The LTO Ultrium Consortium, which effecti.ely produces be the way of life if we want to sur.i.e the imminent big consolidation the only tape game in town with its LTO format, reported data/IoT data deluge. n the future that .endors shipped 78,000 PB of compressed LTO tape Object storage capacity in 2015. squeezing out NAS In any e.ent, when you put the e.er-growing capacity RICH CASTAGNA is TechTarget’s VP of Editorial. Snapshot 1: Capacity driving most NAS purchases Cloud alternatives to local backup Snapshot 2: NFS and 10 Gig pre- ferred for new NAS Hadoop’s role in big data storage Sinclair: Simple storage not so simple Matchett: Say hi to the transforma- tional cloud About us STORAGE • MAY 2016 5 STORAGE REVOLUTION JON TOIGO Home Castagna: Big storage cooking up in labs Toigo: Hyper- Hyper- also so-called “systems of insight” (read: big data analytics consolidation systems) traditionally deployed on sprawling, mostly Li- the future consolidated nux-based cluster farms in which indi.idual nodes consist Object storage of a ser.er and some internal or locally-attached storage. squeezing out NAS is the future IBM made a pretty compelling case that all of those x86 ser.ers could be consolidated into VMs (or KVMs) run- Snapshot 1: IBM mainframe illuminates a path toward ning on its new big iron platform.