VAST DATA LEADS THE WAY IN SUSTAINABLE DATA MANAGEMENT FOR AI APPLICATIONS

By: Haider Aziz, Managing Director META, VAST Data

Can you provide a brief overview of VAST Data?

VAST Data is the data platform software company leading business into the AI era. Accelerating time-to-insight for workload-intensive applications, the VAST data platform delivers scalable performance, radically simple data management and enhanced productivity.

VAST Data has innovated the world’s first data platform - encapsulating storage, database, global namespace and data engine capabilities - built from the ground up for AI and deep learning. VAST Data's platform is designed to leverage the power of flash-based storage technology while optimizing cost and performance. Our solutions are built on a disaggregated, scale-out architecture that separates compute and storage resources. This approach enables efficient scaling, eliminates storage silos, and allows organizations to utilize storage resources more effectively.

In what ways does VAST Data's data platform contribute to sustainable practices?

Data centers are facing two significant challenges: managing and computing on a rapidly increasing amount of data, and meeting sustainability goals. In 2022, VAST published its first Sustainability Report, which details the company's sustainability initiatives and progress. The report found that VAST's storage platform has the potential to save customers up to 90% on energy costs over a 10-year period. This translates to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, as well as cost savings for customers.

VAST achieves this energy efficiency by marrying global data algorithms with state-of-the-art technology. The combination of hyperscale flash, breakthrough erasure code efficiency, global data reduction, and compute power reduction all contribute to an environmentally-compelling proposition for organizations seeking to achieve demonstrable energy efficiency improvements.

What kind of benefits and cost savings can businesses gain by making their data centers more energy-efficient?

Making data centers more energyefficient can bring numerous benefits and cost savings for businesses. Energy consumption constitutes a significant portion of data center operating expenses. By adopting energy-efficient practices and optimized storage solutions, like those offered by VAST Data, businesses can reduce power requirements and cooling needs, leading to substantial cost savings over time. Moreover, energy-efficient data centers enhance operational efficiency, as they are more stable and reliable, resulting in fewer downtimes and increased productivity.

These energy-efficient data centers are designed with scalability in mind, allowing businesses to optimize resource utilization and scale their data centers more efficiently and cost-effectively as their needs grow. This avoids overprovisioning and unnecessary energy consumption while aligning resources with demand.

What are some of the trends and developments you see shaping the future of data management and

storage?

Several trends are shaping the future of data management and storage, and VAST Data is at the forefront of these developments.

Firstly, the rapid growth of unstructured data, like multimedia content and sensor data, demands efficient solutions. Traditional structured databases are no longer sufficient to handle the sheer volume and complexity of unstructured data. VAST Data's platform can handle and process such data at scale. Additionally, flash-based storage technology, such as SSDs, is gaining prominence for its speed and performance, enabling high-speed data processing and AI/ML workloads.

Moreover, many organizations are adopting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies to leverage the benefits of both on-premises and cloud environments. Future data management solutions need to seamlessly integrate with and facilitate data mobility across these diverse environments.

Lastly, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency are gaining importance. Future solutions need to minimize the carbon footprint and optimize power consumption, supporting the integration of renewable energy sources.