Scaling to a Zettabyte; NEC's Karen Dutch Defines Storage Solutions in the Data Center 2.0

A well-known study released by IDC in 2007 forecast that by 2010 the amount of information that will be copied and created in the global digital universe will climb to nearly 1 zettabyte (that's 1 million petabytes). That number was based on the assumption that there was approximately 160 exabytes of information in existence in 2006 and that global data growth will continue to grow at a year over year rate of 57%. Assuming that forecast holds true, this puts the total global store of information at or over 400 exabytes by the end of this year.

Compelling statistics, no doubt, and while that report translates into a lot of good news and healthy revenues for storage vendors, storage managers grappling with this growth in information are probably less than enthused by this report. As most storage managers know, storage growth no longer automatically equates to more personnel to help in the task of managing this data and the underlying storage systems.

It wasn't that long ago that most enterprises followed a general rule of thumb in terms of how many TBs of storage that a storage administrator could manage. Whether that ratio was 1:1, 10:1 or 20:1, as more TBs of storage were added, storage managers had some assurance that they would receive more storage administrators or more robust storage management tools to help them manage this additional data.

This traditional assumption of "more storage=more people" is no longer realistic. Storage systems with inexpensive, high capacity SATA disk drives are now routinely used in the storage of archived and backup data. While these forms of data typically do not require the same level of day-to-day oversight and management that production data requires, managing the data on these storage systems takes on a different nature.

Responsibilities such as managing capacity and performance growth, replicating data offsite for DR, copying or backing up data to removable media such as optical or tape and migrating data during technology refreshes can grow in magnitude as the amount of storage grows. Toss in the time required to stay up-to-date and best manage new technologies like deduplication and it becomes obvious that bringing in these new storage systems is not necessarily a plug-n-play proposition.

However there is an added twist to the ongoing management of these storage systems for this data. These storage systems are viewed as operational expenses and not critical to daily business operations so no new staff is added for their ongoing management. As a result, the responsibility of managing these storage systems typically falls to existing individuals who try to manage these systems as they have time.

These problems are creating the need for a new type of storage system architecture that is specifically designed to address these needs. NEC's Vice President of Advanced Storage Products, Karen Dutch, addressed some of these concerns in her recent Spring 2008 SNW presentation, "Defining Storage Solutions in the Data Center 2.0". In this presentation, she provided a number of pointers as to what features these new storage architectures should deliver to keep storage management in this environment manageable including:

• Self managing
• Data mobility
• Non-disruptive evolution
• Scalability without trade-offs
• Enhanced, flexible resiliency
• Integrated data management services/li>
• Industry standard interface support

In the next blog entry, I'll take a closer look at these points and how NEC's HYDRAstor is delivering on these new objectives.