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The realm of data / network storage abounds with numerous technologies and a lot of hype. However, if one cuts through the clutter of hype and spin, a few of these technologies like virtualization, VTL and grid storage have moved from blue-sky research to the blueprint stage.
Today, we see a lot of products being shipped based on these new technologies. Here’s a look at some of the latest technologies and what the future portends.
Wide Area File Service (WAFS)
This is a network storage technology that makes it possible to access a remote data center as though it were local. This could be a boon to businesses that have remote or branch offices by enabling them to manage data back up in real-time from a central location. This also allows for real file server consolidation and optimizes WAN file traffic thus cutting down on operating costs and boosting productivity. Companies like Brocade, Cisco, and numerous start-ups like Expand Networks, Tacit Networks, Riverbed Technologies have rolled out products in this space.
Virtualization
According to the searchstorage website, virtualization is the pooling of physical data from multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console. This translates into various advantages like better disk utilization, consolidation of data and services. Virtualization has made the long journey from the mainframe environment to the desktop today.
Hitachi Data Systems Regional Director India, Atul Sood feels that virtualization has moved beyond the innovators.
A lot many followers are embracing virtualization. But it will still take time to catch up everywhere. Vendors are coming out with various “flavors of virtualization.”
Various vendors are doing virtualization in different ways. So you have vendors of data storage arrays like HDS hosting virtualization directly on the controller, while software vendors may port virtualization applications to servers or SAN devices while Fabric switch players implement virtualization services within the fabric in the form of smart switch.
Sood expects the technology to take center-stage in another 2-3 years.
Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL)
A VTL enables a disk storage system to look exactly like one or more tape libraries to the backup application. In the data storage tape vs disc war, it seems like the tape vendors are upping the ante by leaning towards Virtual tape libraries. VTL vendors like Sun, Netapp, and HP have been seeing good sales of their VTL lines.
“Tape is also evolving in terms of technology. We have higher capacity tape libraries and increased access tape libraries. The tape has always been seen as an archival medium and in an archival medium you want maximum security. On a disc, one overwrites the data because you move the past data on to the library where you want it to be safe,” says KS Ramanujam, director, data management and data storage business, Sun Microsystems.
VTL is seen as the transition to disk based storage. VTL is mainly touted for its convenience and performance improvements over traditional tape.
Grid based technology
“While a lot is spoken about grid technologies, what has been wrong is the “metering aspect” that vendors are harping on and not the application perspective,” feels Atul Sood of HDS. He thinks that HDS has made a step in this direction through its application-optimized storage technology.
NetApp has come out with an operating system called Data Ontap for the high performance segment. George Thomas, country manager, NetApp India feels that grid data storage could solve the challenge of scaling up architecture to meet business requirement.
Sun was one of the first vendors to come up with utility-based data storage services where the customer pays for the data storage on the basis of per GB per hour.
Holographic storage
Holographic data storage is still viewed by many as being in the sci-fi realm, but efforts are on to make this a viable technology in a few years. In holographic data storage, data is stored as an optical interference pattern within a thick, photosensitive optical material like a crystal. Intersecting two coherent laser beams within the data storage material does this.
Holographic disk storage can attain higher density than standard magnetic disk drives, which store data only on the surface of a disk. Holographic data storage technology on the other hand, enables data to be stored through out the polymer material that makes up a disk. This data storage technology is likely to be popular with studios and video editors since the data can be read and stored in parallel at a million bits at a time, and prototypes of the holographic disk arrays have a data transfer rate of 27MB/sec. One 5¼ inch-diameter optical disc can store up to 150 million pages - more than 63 times the capacity of DVD.
InPhase, Maxell, Optware Corporation and Daewoo Electronics are some of the companies working in this arena. This data storage technology is touted as the replacement to film and the broadcasters and studios are expected to lap up the technology when it arrives.
© CyberMedia News
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