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Data Storage Predictions for 2008
Lucas123 writes "IDC just released its predictions for 2008 with regards to data storage trends. Its research shows, among other things, a greater adoption of online backup and archiving services, the 'prevalent' use of full-disk encryption in the data center, and mainstream adoption of solid-state disk drives due to falling prices. From the story: 'There are very simple situations and application scenarios where solid-state disks will be worth the risk. It does promise some great potential benefit in terms of I/O ... [and] solid state will make a significant impact on reducing heat from spindle usage in server blade deployments and to boost functionality in mobile devices.' According to IDC, storage capacity is exploding at a rate of almost 60% per year."
I already know some people using the Amazon data cloud technology and I suspect that will increase. I'm a bit leery of putting my data in the hands of Amazon, who have essentially stated before that they will never delete anything they know about you. Probably doesn't exactly apply to this service, or does it?
- flash drive, say 64G or so
- on board ram cache (let's say 1G) that stores most recently accessed files for really fast access.
- the 1G cache is expandable if you want really high performance
- modest battery or capacitor, enough to enable write-back instead of write-through
- USB 2.0, firewire, or eSATA it's all good.
- doesn't cost significantly more than you'd expect from the above components
when i google for something like this the closest hits i get are for products with spinning platters instead of the flash, some horrendously expensive SSD drives, and readyboost-branded flash drives.While datacenters may be physically secured, they are also sometimes broken into. The last thing a company wants is to have personal information lost because a server was stolen. It may depend on what law or regulations are put in place to provide for data security compliance, and it may depend on what type of data the datacenter holds. I can sure see banks, insurance companies, or any company with a large amount of employee data, wanted to have that data encrypted at all times.
I'm not sure I agree with your proposal, but I definately don't agree with the storage capacity you mention. The issue is that developing technology takes time. What you propose is like planning a new highway for today's needs without realizing that by the time you actually complete construction you still don't have enough capacity.
What you need to do is say "how much will I need in five years?" and then build that. That said, if the purpose is long-term archival backup of hard-drives, anything smaller than 500GB will be nearly useless in five years. Anything much less would be like backing up your RAID array on floppy disks. Eight inch floppy disks.
1) there is no need 2) encryption costs resources
Except for laptops. Especially those that belong to governments and corporations. But do agree with the datacenter, it is useless in a secured area. The IDC serves up a poorly thought out storage trends should be the title.
This article along with all of those who have something to say about backups should be modded "Redundant". After all, what good is a backup solution without redundancy?
That whole article sucked.
1) Says absolutely nothing that hasn't been true for over 30+ years.
2) Did this come from a random word generator?
3) Object based storage systems, maybe given enough time but 2008 isn't going to be magical.
4) Yep, we will see very high end $$$ laptops use solid state, but given the cost, current densities and Moore's law, at least 5 more years.
5) iSCSI? Why not DASD? DASD is still faster. EMC paying the bills?
6) Already happened. Think removable disks and USB.
7) Why eat the latency, recovery risk and costs in a secure data center? The TAPE needs securing, not the disks. (They didn't mention laptops, different story).
8) Says nothing
9) Green, had to find an excuse to say the word. If I bought new 35W CPU it could be green, or if I re-use the 145W heater it is green?
10)Is fluff 'n stuff. Motherhood.
Now a few choice predictions I will make.
1) Think if your organization has 5000 desktops and each has a spare 100GB that is 50TB of backup storage that is not used. 2008 will be the year we will serious start to look at distributed disk to disk backups.
2) Big one box storage solutions have maxed out in market penetration, mid-sized and small sized storage appliances is where the growth this. Disk is cheap and we over manage it.
3) Disk drive manufacturers will still do very well as they have the price/performance point. Even a high end laptop will say boot from 64G of flash, will still want a 800GB drive for storage.
4) Disk encryption will be standard in **laptops** for government and many corporations making some small headway into the consumer market.
5) Your next high end tape cartridge might be a hard drive with contact points. Same volume, higher density, 10 times as fast and no tape mechanism to eat tapes. Might even have built in hardware encryption. 2008 will be a serious start year for this.
6) A realization of what information we need to "dump" and what we really need to keep will grow. While an unsightly mess inside a computer goes unseen, it is none the less there. Data retention policies will grow and need more work.
BTW, personally I haven't used tape backup in over 9 years. After spending far too much money on tape transports, tape jams, longevity/storage issues I gave up on tape. Been using disk-2-disk over the network ever since. Preferring cpio, Samba, NFS, rsync/rdist etc. For compression, use gzip in a pipe, for encryption (where I need it) keys on a USB and PGP. Works great. And oh yes, I have had to recover. Works like smoke.