Today, more and more businesses are choosing object storage – particularly for cloud and web.
According to Gartner, by 2021, more than 80% of enterprise data will be stored in “scale out” storage systems in enterprise and cloud data centres; up 30% from today.[1]
So why should your business choose object storage? Is it right for you? Here are what we see as the top benefits:
1. Scalability
With traditional file storage, your files are named and stored according to a file hierarchy. Your files have basic metadata attached – such as the file name, date it was created, and the date it was last modified. However, while this works well, it becomes a problem as your data grows and expands. Your processor becomes a bottleneck, and performance suffers.
With object storage, on the other hand, your data lacks structure and hierarchy, but is simply stored as data - along with metadata and a unique identifier. This means that it’s incredibly easy to scale.
You can think of file storage as a warehouse. When you first put a box of files in there, it seems like you have plenty of space. However, as your data needs grow, you’ll fill up the warehouse to capacity before you know it. By contrast, an object storage solution, such as the Lenovo Storage DX8200C powered by Cloudian, is like the warehouse, except with no roof. You can keep adding data infinitely – the sky’s the limit.
2. Searchability
As the volume of data which organisations are collecting is expanding astronomically, object storage provides a very fast and logical way to locate data. By tagging data with metadata, it can be searched for, and retrieved, in very sophisticated ways.
Say, for instance, an incident occurs at a major airport which uses object storage to keep its security footage. Authorities can easily narrow down the footage by searching for relevant tags.
In addition, traditional storage systems aren’t designed for HTTP(S). This means it can be hard to share and manage files programmatically. Object storage, on the other hand, tagged with metadata, makes it very easy.
3. Cost Savings
An object storage solution, such as the Lenovo Storage DX8200C powered by Cloudian, can also be a very cost-effective and economical way to keep your data. As well as negating the need for additional servers, it can also provide you with a more productive and efficient way of storing and accessing the data that you need - both now, and potentially, in the future.
Unlike traditional storage systems – which require rigorous data recovery and back up plans, object storage offers an online, scalable file repository – and doesn’t require any backup or archiving. As all object storage data is always readily available, you can do away with the cost and administrative hassle of having a separate backup app and process in place.
Find out more
If you want to learn more about the benefits of object storage – and the Lenovo Storage DX8200C powered by Cloudian, give the team at The Missing Link a call on 1300 723 381.
[1] https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2016/10/25/magic-quadrant-for-distributed-file-systems-and-object-storage/
