More data in more places, used by more people on more devices. These realities require organizations to reassess their approach to storage. In 2021, we considered cloud-focused storage options, which meant taking data security more seriously.
This is a trend in the data storage industry that has struck a chord with users.
When it comes to ease of use storage options, companies have the embarrassment of wealth.
Instead of a typical on-premises storage setup, your organization can choose from three fast-growing options. Software defined storage (SDS), Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) or storage as a service (STaaS).
Software defined storage: Virtualizing storage resources and separating them from the hardware makes it easier to reallocate and expand storage capacity as needed. More organizations are choosing this approach than ever before. Gartner’s storage strategy roadmap predicts that 50% of global storage capacity will be deployed as SDS on-premises or in the public cloud by 2024, up from about 15% in 2020.
The Adoption of SDS Dennis Hahn, senior analyst at data center storage at research firm Omdia, said it has been linked to a significant increase in unstructured data, especially when it is expensive to store.Therefore, SDS is Object storage, Although it is also used for block storage in some cases. Hahn added that lower prices for SDS and the sheer number of options do not hurt.
Hyper-converged infrastructure: HCI Is a derivative of SDS that bundles storage, computing and networking into one virtualized system. HCI adoption has grown dramatically over the past few years, from those used by organizations for specific applications and workloads to those used throughout the environment. It is also ideal for fast-growing edge environments. A Research According to a survey by the Evaluator Group, more than 70% of companies have evaluated or will evaluate HCI, and the remaining 30% have already implemented HCI.
One of the reasons for the growth of the HCI market is the maturity of the technology itself. It is now possible to acquire HCI nodes with hundreds of terabytes of flash storage, four or more CPUs, and terabytes of memory. Another growth factor for this data storage industry trend is vendors offering lower cost options with fewer blades.
STaaS: Storage as a service is costing both SDS and HCI. While SDS and HCI are easy to use and scalable, STaaS is actually a “simple button”. This allows organizations to store all data in the cloud in a pay-as-you-go model, with vendors handling configuration, installation, upgrades, maintenance, and support. Customers can allocate and move resources as needed. Adoption of STaaS Expected to grow According to Statista, it increased by 42% between 2020 and 2022.
Kubernetes has increased the need for containerized storage.
Kubernetes is a major success story, and organizations are heavily embracing extensible open source platforms.by Linux Foundation, 75% of enterprises use Kubernetes in the cloud or as a combination of on-premises and public cloud hybrid Kubernetes. Vendors have recognized the need for containerized storage and have spent the past 1-2 years achieving it. NetApp’s Project Astra, Commvault’s HyperScale X-series appliances, Red Hat’s OpenShift Container Storage, and Pure Storage’s acquisition of Portworx helped advance this goal.
These companies, along with other companies such as StorageOS, Robin.io, and Ionir, are deliberately building stateful, rather than stateless, container-native storage technologies. container Originally developed to spin up and spin down as needed, companies want to use it for stateful applications such as databases. Like a database, you need to capture the entire state of your application, including metadata and configuration as well as data.
Storage and backups are more vulnerable to malware than ever before.
Not so long ago, there was a time when businesses never thought about whether their data was stored securely. They thought it was. It’s obviously no longer the case.
research According to Continuity Software, enterprise storage devices have an average of 15 vulnerabilities, three of which are considered high or critical. 5 most common types Storage vulnerabilities According to Continuity Software, the use of vulnerable protocols or protocol settings, common unaddressed vulnerabilities and exposures, access rights issues, insecure user management and authentication, and inadequate logging.
Even AWS cloud storage is not immune. Continuity Software has discovered that AWS cloud storage is at high risk of ransomware due to identity and configuration errors.
Backup is No more secure.. Innovative hackers have come to find ways to break into backups, change retention policies, and inject viruses. When trying to restore a backup, IT staff may introduce the virus into a production environment. As a result, vendors are beginning to add ransomware protection features such as detection / deletion and sandboxing to their backup suites.
“We have seen the emergence and acceleration of air gap vaulting-like solutions where data is physically and / or logically separated from the production environment and is immutable (immutable). Christoph Bertrand, boxed and senior analyst at ESG Research, said: These tactics greatly increase the chances of a company recovering, Bertland said.
Conclusion
While the challenge of storing data is increasing, so are storage options. Understanding current data storage industry trends while measuring your company’s tolerance for everything from access speeds to downtime can make a difference.