Out with The Old: Why Your Enterprise Should Upgrade to Object Storage

You know those old commercials that urged parents to feed healthy drinks over boring milk to their kids to make them taller, stronger & sharper? Enterprise storage servers are similar to that- Ever changing and upgrading over previously established norms. And as time passes and data creation techniques change, storage servers have to keep up with these new methods.

Today, data exists in multiple forms- blockchain, big data, machine data, etc. Then there are different forms of structured and unstructured data being built on a day-to-day basis. An estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated every day. On an enterprise level, this implies that data generation will keep expanding with the passage of time and as your business operations expand and complicated. Keeping up with such data requires the use of storage solutions that can manage such volumes, without slowing down systems or being overwhelmed.

This is where object data storage comes in. Object data storage is capable of managing vast volumes of structured & unstructured data, without compromising processor speed or affecting business functions. So, what exactly is object storage? To understand that, let’s take a brief look at the history of storage servers and where object storage fits in.

Block and File— Storage Champions of the Past

Historically, the most commonly used enterprise data storage solutions have been ‘block storage’ and ‘file storage’. Block storage involves computers sharing a singular large storage device or ‘array’. Their popularity boomed in the 90s when enterprise data started to expand and the flexibility offered by this storage system created a ‘storage area network’ or SAN.

On the other hand, file storage is exactly like traditional paper-based office storage i.e. data is stored as files (such as documents and spreadsheets), which are arranged in a series of nested folders.

Object Storage- Dawn of a New Storage Alternative

Today’s data storage requirements have changed drastically. And block and file storage options are facing difficulty in keeping up with the changing nature of how data is organized and stored. Data created today is largely unstructured i.e. they’re individualized items of information. Data of this nature isn’t organized in a traditionally structured database, so block storage isn’t suited to it. While the data is mostly stored as files and documents on an individual level, its size is simply too large for file storage options to manage. File storage wasn’t designed to handle such sheer volumes of data and given their hierarchical nature of storage, it becomes even more difficult to manage as the data size expands.

To counter these challenges, a new kind of storage option was developed in the late 90s—object storage. In this storage system, data is not stored as blocks, files, or folders. Instead, it’s saved in flexible-sized containers called objects. Storing data in object storage is easy and much like putting items in a bucket. This analogy is what led to the storage architecture being named ‘bucket’, as it’s a generic term for a volume of object storage.

Dell Object Storage– Why You Should Consider Using It

Dell’s reputation as a manufacturer of hardware and software for both individual & enterprise use precedes itself. Their object storage solution helps you store & manage unstructured data with cloud-like flexibility and scalability while having complete control over it.

Organizations should consider deploying Dell’s object storage architecture due to the huge cost savings made by tiering cold and warm data to object storage for long-term savings. Their object storage infrastructure supports newer forms of data created through modern application development. Ultimately, organisations get to leverage object storage to analyze data and gain insights into their customers. Simply put, object storage allows businesses to effectively use cloud technologies which help in gaining a competitive advantage.

The Advantage of Dell’s Object Storage

In Dell’s object storage, smart software ultimately controls the overall system. It assigns a unique name to the data file post, and the data is identified using a highly optimized mechanism designed for quick lookups and reliability. Even if the storage location of an object changes behind the scene, information is updated in real-time through the internal lookup mechanism. The object’s identification name remains the same, allowing users to easily access it at any later point in time.

Object storage is perfect for scaling when you’re dealing with a massive growth of unstructured data. That’s because each ID is unique, so there’s no confusion or crossover between multiple data files. This further ensures that available storage space is well-utilized & virtually limitless.

Object storage is also highly robust. Dell’s object storage solutions create and store three copies of each data object, in geographically distributed locations. Individual objects also carry a checksum value, which allows data corruption to be easily detected. In such cases, a new copy of the object can be quickly generated to replace it.

Ready to take the leap to object storage for your enterprise? Why don’t you reach out to us using the link here.