VIEWPOINT
GETTING A GRIP ON DATA UNIFIED FAST FILE AND FAST OBJECT STORAGE IS KEY TO ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF MODERN DATA, WRITES ASSAAD EL SAADI, REGIONAL DIRECTOR – MIDDLE EAST, PURE STORAGE
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f we take a look back at the evolution of enterprise storage, there have been several significant milestones — we can trace the development of block storage to the early generations of computers, file storage emerging alongside the personal computer, and more recently, object storage rocketing to prominence with the take-off of the web. Each of these storage workloads fulfill important roles. Applications that draw on file storage have grown more demanding, database applications have become more sophisticated, and the web, IoT, and demand for analytics have caused an explosion in the need for object storage. But as the way in which we use data has shifted, the technical silos typically observed between these 30
CXO INSIGHT ME
OCTOBER 2020
workloads have created challenges which can no longer be ignored. As a result, we are seeing the emergence of a new category of storage to address the needs of modern data — unified fast file and object storage (UFFO). Driving change A modern data experience — whereby data is easily accessible, commutable and delivered where it is needed instantly — does not respect the technical silos that exist between different environments. In the past, each data workload would largely have resided and been used within its data store. For instance, database applications would have drawn on dedicated block resources; files would have stayed in file stores and web applications would have
depended upon object storage resources. This is not to say that both file and object data stores have been neglected from innovation. Fast file emerged to consistently deliver high performance within traditional architectures for small or large files, as well as sequential or random file workloads. However, with modern data requiring all of the above at the same time, its limitations are clear. Similarly, object storage underwent its own transformation. Initially built to house large amounts of nonmission critical data, fast object emerged in direct response to the rise of cloud-native applications. These apps used object as their default storage and so required higher performance levels to process the workloads.
