Welcome to the Cloud, Big Data, Software Defined, Bulk, Object Storage trends and news page, part of the micro site collection of resources. Software defined, bulk, cloud and object storage exist to support expanding and diverse application data demands.
A collection, not a single product
There are various types of cloud, bulk and object storage, including public services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), Google, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer and Rackspace among many others. There are also solutions for hybrid and private deployment from Cisco, DDN, Dell EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Noobaa, OpenStack, Quantum, Rackspace, Scality, Seagate, Spectra, Storpool, Suse, Swift and WD among others.
Cloud products and services, along with associated data infrastructures including object storage, file systems, repositories and access methods, are at the center of bulk, big data, big bandwidth and little data initiatives on a public, private, hybrid and community basis. After all, not everything is the same in cloud, virtual and traditional data centers or information factories, from active data to inactive deep digital archiving.
There is no such thing as an information recession, with more data being generated, moved, processed, stored, preserved and served, granted there are economic realities. Likewise, as a society, our dependence on information being available for work or entertainment, from medical healthcare to social media and all points in between, continues to increase. The Human Face of Big Data is one useful way to see the human side of that growth.
In addition, people and data are living longer, as well as getting larger, hence little data, big data and very big data. Cloud products and services, along with associated object storage, file systems, repositories and access methods, remain at the center of these initiatives.
Where to start
The fastest route into the archive depends on the question you are carrying. These three pieces are the most useful entry points:
- Cloud, bulk and object storage fundamentals explains buckets, namespaces, endpoints, replication and the cloud services built on them.
- Data infrastructure primer maps the servers, storage, I/O networking, virtualization and software layers that support applications.
- Software defined, cloud and object storage news trends collects the vendor moves and technical shifts that shaped the period.
Where to learn more
The following resources provide additional information about big data, bulk, software defined, cloud and object storage. Some are internal briefings; others are the original external references.
In this archive
- AWS EFS Elastic File System, a first preview
- AWS S3 cross region replication
- Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3
- AWS storage gateway: first, second and third impressions
- April 2015 Server StorageIO update newsletter
- Goodbye 2013, hello 2014: predictions past, present and future
At the source
- StorageIOblog for the ongoing blog and analysis.
- Server StorageIO for advisory and consulting work.
- Amazon S3 and the S3 user guide.
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage.
- OpenStack Swift and Ceph for open source object storage.
- SNIA CDMI for the Cloud Data Management Interface standard.
A note on naming and dates
The archive keeps the terms used when each piece was written. Some products have been renamed, some services have been replaced and some predictions have aged badly. The original publication dates are shown on every briefing so the context remains clear. Where a link now points to a different destination, the nearest current source is used.
Ok, nuff said, for now. Cheers, gs.
Greg Schulz
Founder of Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC, and author of Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking, The Green and Virtual Data Center, Resilient Storage Networks and Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials. More about the author.