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The data storage dilemma

Joanne Carew
By Joanne Carew, ITWeb Cape-based contributor.
Johannesburg, 17 Oct 2012

In 2011 alone, more machine data was generated than has been generated since the beginning of time. As businesses are faced with ever increasing volumes of data, how organisations choose to store that data has become an important decision.

This issue was discussed at length by the team from Hitachi Data Systems at the Hitachi Information Forum, held on Tuesday, in Rosebank.

As the industry's capacity and functionality needs have changed, so to has the technology, according to Tony Reid, SAF PMI and EMEA pre-sales lead.

Solid state technology

"Today, we don't even think about megabytes, we're talking terabytes and petabytes," said Bob Plumridge, CTO for EMEA at Hitachi Data Systems, during his keynote at the forum. Plumridge believes that businesses looking to increase performance should not be looking to disk drives, suggesting that the way people use disk drives will have to change. According to Plumridge, solid state technology is going to turn the storage industry on its head.

Although solid state technology was around 20 years ago, Plumridge suggested it was not as reliable and affordable as it is today. For Plumridge, the gap between solid state technology and hard drives is closing at a rapid rate. He predicts that a movement to solid state tech will happen over the next seven or eight years.

"We believe solid state technology is where we are headed," Plumridge said.

Cloud storage

In the case of cloud, the hype around it is a 10:90 situation, said Harry Zimmer, senior director of global competitive and market intelligence at Hitachi Data Systems, with "just 10% of the hype around cloud being real and 90% just a lot of BS".

Zimmer stated that a lot of people are still a little unsure about cloud. "Cloud storage is an enigma for many customers," he said, adding that, in some countries, legislation dictates where one can and cannot store specific data in the cloud.

According to Ros Schulman, data protection product line manager at Hitachi Data Systems, there are upsides and downsides to cloud storage, particularly when it comes to data protection. Cloud storage allows for business agility, easy up or down scaling, rapid deployment of resources when needed, and inexpensive off-site storage, she said. As far as Schulman is concerned, the problem is that companies are still unsure about security in the cloud and cloud storage often comes with low bandwidth and a lot of latency.

Virtualised data centres

"Hitachi's storage virtualisation technology is industry leading," said Reid, who also mentioned that the company was first working on virtual storage in the late 90s. According to Plumridge, virtual storage and virtualisation remains a driving force in the storage game.

Lynn Collier, senior director of cloud, file and content for Hitachi Data Systems EMEA at Hitachi Data Systems, believes virtualisation underpins how we can move forward when talking about storage and the new information centre economy. "When talking about virtualisation, businesses want the same benefits from storage as they are getting from servers," said Collier.

Zimmer concluded that these storage trends require action, analytics and a good partner or vendor to help with the deployment of the chosen solution.

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