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Data Storage Predictions for 2008

Posted by Zonk on from the we-all-like-storing-data dept.

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."

23 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Datacenters by fishybell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I imagine that full-disk encryption for datacenters is a while off as any drop in I/O and throughput will be a non-starter for the already tasked drives. IMHO full-disk encryption isn't necessary as long as the datacenter is physically secured, just that all off site backups be encrypted. Anytime data leaves the datacenter it should be encrypted, but encrypting local storage only matters if you fear someone breaking in physically (encrypted disks won't help when broken in through a network as the computer will decrypt the data for the intruder) or you are selling the disks on eBay afterwards.

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    1. Re:Datacenters by DaveWick79 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Forecase: Overcast with clouds increasing by pheared · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Forecase: Overcast with clouds increasing by tokamoka · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For the most part, storing personal or sensitive data on Amazon S3 (like backups - see duplicity) should go hand in hand with encryption (GPG etc). I carry my laptop in my bag to work, and really do think that the data on that stands much more chance of being nicked than the encrypted data I have on S3.

  3. Bigger tubes... by russlar · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...we're gonna need them.

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    Anybody want my mod points?
    1. Re:Bigger tubes... by Red+Flayer · · Score: 4, Funny
      No, we'll need smaller tubes.
      FTS:

      According to IDC, storage capacity is exploding at a rate of almost 60% per year."
      No, you've got it backwards -- since only 40% of our storage capacity will be unexploded at the end of next year, we'll need tubes only 0.4 of the size of the current tubes. In 2010, we'll only need tubes 0.064 the size of the current tubes. See where this is headed?

      In some 15 years and change, we'll only need microtubes.

      In just 23 years, we'll need nanotubes. Let's just hope no one tries to send anything bigger than a picotruck down them.
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      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  4. Redundant? by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?

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    The game.
    1. Re:Redundant? by canuck57 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  5. wish list by fred+fleenblat · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Is there a product that fits this description?
    • 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.
    1. Re:wish list by DaveWick79 · · Score: 3, Informative

      1. They already exist, but for about $4000 for example here
      2. On board RAM cache - it's called Intel Turbo Memory, it's cheap and it's been availabe on laptops for several months now and will soon be on the desktop also. Coupled with Vista readyboost it will do what you want it to, or it can also serve as a high speed flash RAM drive on which you can install frequently used apps or files.
      3. They have them in 2GB also.
      For the rest, they already have 32GB Flash for a reasonable price (around $300) if you make the comparison to RAM rather than spinning platters.

    2. Re:wish list by DaveWick79 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Problem with RAM is that it's volatile and you'd be screwed if power went out while writing back to that cache. Intel Turbo Memory uses an internal PCI Xpress slot as it's interface, and employs high speed flash memory. While not as fast as RAM memory, at least you wouldn't have to keep a battery in it to power it for long enough to write the entire contents of a RAM cache back to memory. Besides, if you want a RAM cache, isn't that what the OS does already with RAM? If you want control over what goes into your RAM cache, there are a number of softwares which will create a RAM drive, which you can then load with the data you choose at system startup.

    3. Re:wish list by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 4, Informative

      at that size usb 2.0 is out firewire is faster and has less cpu load.

  6. Numbers 9 and 10 are red herrings... by SacredByte · · Score: 2, Insightful

    9. Green storage initiatives will cause companies to seek nondisruptive/partial hardware upgrades.
    This assumes that the 'environmental cost' of continuing to operate obscelete technology is less than the 'environment cost' of upgrading to more efficient technology. This is not always the case; Imagine adding capacity to a PDP-11 to 'keep it modern.' The cost of powering the equipment more than makes up for any possible environmental ills. So basically what they are saying is that next year people are going to start upgrading their computers a little bit at a time instead of chucking out the window every time Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Dell, HP, Apple, etc. come out with something new. It seems like a good idea, so much so that; in fact, most sane people already do it.

    10. De-duplication, thin provisioning and virtual tape libraries will be in demand because of power saving efforts in the data center.
    The issue here is that they make the false assumption that skimping on backups is a good thing. Due to certian high-profile corporate scandals, many companies MUST keep certian records either for a specific term, or indefinately. The problem with TFA's assumption is that they assume that the 'saving' money by not having multiple backups in multiple locations couldn't come back to bite the company in the ass big-time (huge fines). The reason companies keep multiple off-site backups is simple: The cost of keeping multiple off-site backups is LESS THAN the cost of losing the data.
    1. Re:Numbers 9 and 10 are red herrings... by DaveWick79 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      9. I agree with you - the cost of powering old equipment is going to be the driving force behind hardware upgrades in the next 2 years, not the requirement for more speed and capacity. I don't think people have been upgrading their systems a little bit at a time since the sub-$1000 computer became mainstream. The only systems that are going to be upgraded that way are the systems that are designed for expansion, like servers that are designed for storage expansion or blade-type expansion.

      10. I don't think they mean skimping on data backups, they mean de-duplication of unnecessary hardware and not necessarily data backups. For instance not having 2TB of storage on a server when it is only using 100GB - use thin provisioning to give that server access to a dynamic storage volume that gives it only the space it needs. Cut down on duplicate hardware that handles things like backup AD controllers, data backup, etc. and put those tasks on virtual servers. Virtualize your tape libraries with an offsite hard disk backup array. All these lessen the power footprint of your datacenter without lessening the redundancy of your critical data backups.

  7. Re:Massive optical storage? by SacredByte · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  8. Predictions, my arse... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IDC just released its predictions for 2008 with regards to data storage trends. Its research shows...


    If you've ever been involved in an IDC, Gartner or whatever marketing discussion, you know that the "research" mainly consists of going from vendor to vendor (data storage vendors in this case) and asking what, in their wildest dreams, would the ideal demand curve look like. Then they charge for actually coming up with some supporting information to meet the vendors' preferred conclusion, and release the whole thing to consumers in the hopes of stimulating some demand for the paying vendors. Very scientific.

    1. Re:Predictions, my arse... by dave562 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Someone mod this up.

    2. Re:Predictions, my arse... by OnlineAlias · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have, and you hit it right on the head. IDC, even more so than Gartner in my opinion, are famous for their ridiculous "predictions". Nothing to see here, please move along...

  9. Tape drives? by SacredByte · · Score: 2, Funny

    Thats a sticky subject.

  10. Re:Bullshit by canuck57 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  11. Alternative Future by Warbothong · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or, the RIAA, MPAA et al actually succeed in their worldwide legal battles, thus without mountains of music and films to consume, home users' data storage use plummets and the floppy disk becomes the dominant format once more. The world begins to use floppy-based Linux distributions (because Vista takes too many disk swaps to install) and thus everyone enjoys a renaissance of console-based system rescue distros, streaming everything they might want through a lynx port of Gnash. Gradually, as more and more features are packed in to the disks it is realised that a modern form of storage is indeed beneficial. Hence the Zip drive makes a Lazarus style comeback. Hey, it could happen!

  12. My prediction; high profile data loss by Kris_J · · Score: 4, Funny

    In 2008 some twit with a soapbox (magazine column, TV show, whatever) will lose 3TB or more in a single failure and rant about how digital is so much worse than analogue. I bet he'll mention Laserdiscs in there somewhere and possibly The Domesday Book if he's from the UK.

  13. My predictions by Markus+Landgren · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I predict that drives will get bigger, and that many slashdotters who have not heard of wear levelling will be worried about the limited write cycles of flash and get modded insightful for that.