Object storage systems have several unique capabilities compared to other storage systems. They can provide infinite scalability of both performance and capacity, they have integrated and flexible data protection, and they have a strong association of data and metadata. What type of applications lend themselves to such a storage system?
Low Hanging Fruit
Large volumes of unstructured data is the obvious use case for object storage. The bigger the volume and the more unpredictable the volume, the more object storage makes sense, because one can start as small as a few nodes for availability purposes and grow to hundreds or thousands of nodes to meet performance and capacity objectives.
If any part of your business creates significant volumes of unstructured data, it would make sense to take a look at object storage. If for no other reason, it is hard to find a less expensive way to store this data. It’s less expensive because object storage systems are typically built-based on commercial off-the shelf hardware which lowers the overall cost, as well as the fact that object storage systems have integrated data protection that can reduce your costs.
Large volumes of unstructured data can come from a number of sources. If any part of your business does anything with high-definition video, such as 4K or 8K streams, they are going to generate significant amounts of data every time those cameras are operating. This could be everything from a corporate video production department to a high-definition security camera system that needs to store more than a couple of days worth of footage. If you have any computers that automatically create data such as testing results, seismic processing, and any machine-generated data such as logs or sensor data – you’re going to have large volumes of unstructured data. It simply makes sense to store this data on object storage because doing so drastically reduces the costs of storing such data and can increase your abilities to search the data for multiple purposes.
Money where you didn’t have it before
The most impressive thing about object storage, though, is its ability to associate data and metadata. This allows all sorts of possibilities for data monetization, a process that attempts to associate disparate data sets together to generate new information that could generate revenue for a business, or enhance its relationship to customers or target its marketing program.
Such programs require access to huge volumes of data and its associated metadata. This makes object storage perfect for such a project, since it can handle huge volumes of data and all data it stores with associated metadata.
StorageSwiss Take
Large volumes of unstructured data can be very difficult to deal with both from a capacity growth and performance perspective, as well as making sure that the data is protected against accidental or malicious damage. In addition, many more projects are starting to leverage metadata associated with its related data. Object storage systems were built with all of these needs in mind and therefore seems an obvious choice for such use cases.
W. Curtis Preston (aka Mr. Backup) is an expert in backup & recovery systems; a space he has been working in since 1993. He has written three books on the subject, Backup & Recovery, Using SANs and NAS, and Unix Backup & Recovery. Mr. Preston is a writer and has spoken at hundreds of seminars and conferences around the world. Preston’s mission is to arm today’s IT managers with truly unbiased information about today’s storage industry and its products.
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