Grid-based Storage

When I introduced the Storage Evolution, I shared some topics I talk about when meeting with a customer: Virtualization, Deduplication, Grid and Encryption. That list has grown to include Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Convergence, Business Continuity, Clouds and Big Data. It’s about time I start writing about more of these.

The world of storage is changing – fast. When I started consulting, I used to install clusters and super-computers. My specialty was IBM’s SP super computer (like Deep Blue the one that played the Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov). My wife asked if they wore capes.

The super computer market fell apart over a decade ago to grid-based systems. What used to cost millions of dollars was swept away by inexpensive commodity Intel-based servers, usually running Linux and grid software. The market changed and super computers started to become extinct. What used to be a scale-up model became a modular massively-parallel model which became a highly distributed model. The market changed.

 

XIV Is Cool, But Not Cool Enough

Now that I’ve gotten your attention, I have to say I love this box. It takes fairly inexpensive components and makes them sing. The real magic comes in two forms, grid computing and the algorithms that power it.

Back in the 90s, I used to install supercomputers across the USA. These were the deep blue variety that played Garry Kasparov in chess and eventually beat him. Supercomputers were being used to do many high performance computing tasks from analyzing road wear and tear to chemistry, data mining, nuclear simulation and weather forecasting. My wife would ask me if they wore capes.

The industry was going along fine, until some people decided to take inexpensive commodity Intel servers and network them together with a high-speed network, and distributing the workload amongst the different processing nodes. This is when grid computing took down the supercomputing heavyweights.

Introducing The Storage Evolution

What come so mind when you think about storage? There’s so much to consider. Do you think of primary storage, the world where servers directly access their information via methods such as direct attached disk (DAS) storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage (NAS). Do you think about secondary storage, the realm of backups and archives, virtual tape libraries (VTLs), automated tape libraries (ATLs) and long-term repositories (disks, optical platters, tapes or whatever makes sense at the time).

For me, I have four evolutionary topics mapped out. When I sit down to discuss where the action is taking place in storage, I can usually distill it down to four keys areas:

1. Virtualization
2. Deduplication
3. Grid
4. Encryption