Clustered Storage

The paper introduces the reader to a new paradigm shift that is currently taking place in the data storage industry: the movement toward Clustered Storage architectures. Clustered Storage architectures are changing the rules of how data is stored and accessed. This paper discusses the trends that clearly define clustered storage architectures as the future of data storage, detail the requirements of this new category of storage, and introduce the Isilon® IQ clustered storage solution which is the first to deliver on the promises of this paradigm shift. The movement toward Clustered Storage architectures is being driven by three macro trends: • Explosive growth of unstructured data and digital content; • Paradigm shift to cluster computing; • Proliferation of cheaper and faster industry-standard enterprise-class hardware. Today's competitive companies are facing a tremendous increase in the amounts of data used to conduct their everyday business, driven largely by the explosion of unstructured data. IT managers know that applications using and storing video, audio, images, research sets, and other large digital files and unstructured data are pushing the bounds of traditional storage system capacity and performance. The second macro trend is the widespread adoption of clustered computing. Enterprise data centers have evolved from the era of " big iron " proprietary mainframes and symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) servers to that of standards-based (using industry-standard hardware), clustered machines running Linux or Windows. The third macro trend driving the movement to clustered storage is a dramatic decrease in the price performance curves of industry-standard hardware components. This trend is part of the continual movement toward the promise of Moore's Law: over time, companies are getting higher computing power for a lower cost and realizing the economics of commodity hardware. The low cost of commodity hardware components has made the merits of clustered architectures affordable. These macro trends point to three fundamental implications: • The storage industry is undergoing a revolution; • Clustered storage is becoming the dominant new storage architecture; • Customers are reaping substantial business value and benefits from clustered storage. From big monolithic boxes to clustered architectures, storage is following the paradigm shift that has already occurred in the server application world.