Object Storage, because of its ability to cost effectively store petabytes plus of data, is often thought of as a digital dumping ground. While object storage is an ideal location for inactive data, customers aren’t deriving the full benefit of object storage if they are only using it for the dormant data use case. Join Storage Switzerland’s Lead Analyst, George Crump and Western Digital’s ActiveScale Product Manager, Paul Winzenburg on the StorageSwiss Lightboard Video to discuss how object storage can be used in active data use cases.
The key to creating an object storage system that meets the demands of more active use cases is to make sure the system is accessible from a variety of applications and to ensure that performance remains consistent. Solving the first problem of access requires supporting traditional protocols like NFS in addition to more modern protocols like S3.
Delivering consistent performance is a big challenge for typical object storage systems. The typical scale out design of object means that most systems scale by adding storage servers which act as nodes in the cluster. Each node provides additional compute and storage capacity to the cluster. The problem is that compute and capacity are tightly coupled, making it difficult for the customer to add just one of the resources. Demand for scale is typically driven by compute or capacity but rarely both at the same time. As we show in the video, if the storage system can scale storage compute and storage capacity independently it is easier for the customer to meet the demands of the environment and it also keeps costs down by being more resource efficient.
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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