Friday, October 4th, 2013

Time	Event
12:30p	Object Storage: The Future of Scale Out Tom Leyden is Director of Product Marketing for DataDirect Networks. Tom has more than 15 years’ experience working for disruptive IT companies (from emerging stage to acquisition) including four years in cloud computing. He is based in Belgium. TOM LEYDEN DataDirect Networks I’m going to let you in on a secret which will make you sound really smart at your next industry get together. “Object storage is the future to solving all of our data needs.” Got that? Okay, now let’s talk about why. Object storage is a new storage paradigm that is seeing growing interest as it addresses the challenge of efficiently storing massive volumes of unstructured data. Big Unstructured Data. Depending on which analyst firm you talk to, you will hear storage growth predictions that vary between a factor 30 and 40 for the next decades. That means we will all be storing 30-40 times as much digital data ten years from now, compared to today. At the same time companies will only invest an additional 50 percent in personnel to manage their storage infrastructures, meaning that the average storage operator will have to manage 15-20 times as much storage in the next ten years. This calls for storage platforms that require little management and which scale out virtually unlimited. Billions of Users, Always Online And here is how you can sound even smarter, especially when talking to the object-storage skeptic. Major cloud application providers like Google, Facebook and Twitter have deployed object storage to meet the requirements of their fast-growing user base – billions of users are storing trillions of objects in infrastructures that were designed to scale infinitely and perform with the lowest latency. Pay as you go services like Amazon S3 enabled a whole ecosystem of SAAS providers who are now collectively looking at deploying in-house solutions to further optimize costs and performance. Enterprises and other verticals are following closely: private storage clouds, integrated with collaboration platforms are replacing the concept of file servers. Power to the Applications While traditional file based storage is still a smart option for some companies, today’s file based storage platforms don’t scale nearly effectively enough to meet the explosion of storage needs. Not only do file-based storage platforms fail to scale sufficiently, they’re also becoming obsolete as more and more applications are designed to use REST API’s – the default interface for object storage platforms – to talk directly to the storage, without additional (file system) layers in between. So, why should companies use Object Storage for unstructured data and how is it different from NAS or SAN? The biggest problem with those systems is scalability: NAS does not really scale as a single system, at least not when talking about petabyte-size environments. SANs are already pretty complex when deployed with a file system layer on top. Scaling-out makes the problem a lot worse. Object Storage Offers Solutions to Big Data Problems Object Storage is essentially just a different way of storing, organizing and accessing data on disks; it is a storage infrastructure to store … objects, which are essentially files with lots of metadata added to them. The backend architecture of an object storage platform is designed in such a way that all the storage nodes are presented as one single pool; there is no file system hierarchy. The architecture of the platform, and new data protection schemes (vs. RAID, the de-facto data protection scheme for SAN and NAS) allow this pool to scale virtually unlimited while keeping the system simple to manage. Users access object storage through applications that will typically use a REST API, an internet protocol, optimized for online applications. This makes object storage ideal for all online, Cloud environments. When objects are stored, an identifier is created to locate the object in the pool. Applications can quickly retrieve the right data for the users through the object identifier or by querying the metadata – information about objects like the name, when it was created, or by who. This is a lot faster than trying to locate a file through a file system. Ultimately as data explodes, more and more companies will be forced to look at their storage solutions and invest in sustainable, long-term solutions. We believe that object storage will play a major role in addressing those problems. Object storage solutions are designed to scale beyond petabytes as one single system and optimize overall TCO without compromising performance or durability. This results in a platform for a variety of storage cloud solutions, including online collaboration, active archives, cloud backup and worldwide data distribution. So at the next cocktail party or industry mixer, when people start talking about trying to manage the exploding growth of unstructured data, feel free to walk them through how object storage can address their problems. It’s a smart solution to a growing problem. Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library. (Comment on this)
12:49p	Data Center Jobs: Martin International Enclosures At the Data Center Jobs Board, we have a new job listing from Martin International Enclosures, which is seeking a Data Center and IT Sales Representative in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The Data Center and IT Sales Representative is responsible for increasing Martin Enclosures exposure and sales volume in New England and developing a comprehensive strategy for identifying and pursuing existing IT facilities as well as locating and targeting new Data Center upgrades and expansions in the territory. Ideal candidate will have previous experience in the Data Center/IT environment such as sales of server s and/or peripheral equipment, support services or related facilities experience such as power or mechanical services. To view full details and apply, see job listing details. Are you hiring for your data center? You can list your company’s job openings on the Data Center Jobs Board, and also track new openings via our jobs RSS feed. (Comment on this)
1:30p	Arista Networks Adds Two New High Density Switches At Interop New York this week Arista Networks announced two new switches to the 7000 product family, targeted at being leaf switches for high-density and storage racks, providing ultra-low latency and support for VXLAN. The Arista 7050QX-32 and 7050SX-128 leaf switches offer 32 40GbE or 96 10GbE ports and 8 40GbE wire speed ports. The high efficiency 1 or 2u switches feature ultra low-latency, VXLAN and NVGRE capabilities. When used in conjunction with the Arista 7000 series of fixed and modular switches, it allows networks to scale to over 100,000 10 GbE servers in a low latency leaf and spine network. This latest introduction expands the portfolio of switches available with consistent Arista EOS in the form of a single binary image across all products, greatly simplifying network administration.The flexibility of L2 and L3 multipath design options, combined with support for open standards, provides maximum flexibility, scalability, and network wide virtualization. “The new Arista 7050QX-32 gives us an unprecedented switching capacity in a 1RU low-power package. Arista’s stable and capable EOS allows us to expand the complexity of our data processing network while keeping pace with our ever-expanding data center requirements,” said John Belshaw, IT Architecture Advisor, CGG. Arista also announced new network tracers to complement existing health and network virtualization offerings for a full suite of Arista EOS Network Telemetry applications. Path Tracer provides end-to-end visibility into Layer 3 ECMP (equal cost multi-path routing) networks, proactively detecting, logging and reacting to gathered information. “Cloudera Enterprise, our Platform for Big Data, gives our customers access to all their data whether it’s structured or not. It’s the foundation next generation of data management infrastructure, and provides insights that haven’t been possible until now.” said Alan Saldich, vice president of marketing for Cloudera. “Arista’s Map Reduce Tracer provides similar insights to network administrators in understanding network performance and big data workloads”. (Comment on this)
2:30p	Pivotal adds Mobile with Xtreme Labs Acquisition Pivotal makes its first acquisition with Xtreme Labs, Avaya acquires ITNavigator, and Intel builds on its software portfolio by buying Sensory Networks. Pivotal adds Mobile with Xtreme Labs Acquisition Pivotal announced that it has acquired Toronto-based Xtreme Labs, a privately-held, leading mobile strategy and product development firm. The acquisition aligns with Pivotal’s strategy to capitalize on the nexus of converging forces in the industry. Xtreme Labs is a full-service mobile strategy and product development firm that leverages modern engineering practices to build rich and engaging mobile experiences across all platforms. It builds on the modern software development resources at Pivotal to create a team of 500 employees dedicated to agile application development. The terms of the all-cash transaction were not disclosed, however All Things D reports Pivotal may have paid $65 million. “Every enterprise today has to exploit the opportunities offered by mobile,” said Paul Maritz, CEO of Pivotal. “This requires new ways of thinking and working, and the need to get it right the first time and every time. We’re thrilled to bring next-generation mobile capabilities to our customers and welcome Xtreme Labs to the Pivotal family.” Avaya Acquires ITNavigator Avaya announced it has acquired ITNavigator, a leader in cloud, social media, reporting and management solutions. The acquisition will strengthen Avaya’sContact Center solutions as well as expand its Collaborative Cloud portfolio with cloud-based social media, end-to-end management and unified reporting. ITNavigator’s cloud-based social media monitoring and response solution connects to popular social networks, and its management and performance monitoring tools merge real-time updates gathered from a broad range of contact center data and key performance indicators. The Israel based company will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Avaya. ”IT and contact center executives and managers are in need of solutions that simplify day to day operations and enable them to quickly and easily bring on new capabilities,” said Gary E. Barnett, SVP and President, Collaboration at Avaya. “Our experience with ITNavigator – and perhaps more importantly – our customers’ experience with ITNavigator, has indicated that they bring a differentiated, easy-to-use set of solutions that makes the promise of ‘next generation’ contact center, unified communications and cloud-based applications a reality.” Intel acquires Sensory Networks Multiple sources report that Intel has agreed to acquire Sensory Networks – a Mountain View, California based provider of pattern matching and acceleration software technology. The approximately $20 million deal expands on the existing partnership between Intel’s Wind River Systems unit and Sensory Networks. This builds on Intel’s security and software focus, with Sensory Networks products installed where large amounts of data is processed. Intel’s McAfee was a client of Sensory Networks. (Comment on this)
6:03p	Cartoon Contest: A Trying Situation It’s Friday and time for a bit of humor before the work week ends. Diane Alber, the Arizona artist who created Kip and Gary, has a new cartoon for Data Center Knowledge’s cartoon caption contest. We challenge our readers to submit a humorous and clever caption that fits the comedic situation. Please add your entry in the comments below. Then, next week, our readers will vote for the best submission. Here’s Diane’s thoughts on this week’s cartoon, “I know everyone has seen those spaghetti cable messes at some point, have you ever thought about someone getting stuck under all that mess?” Click to enlarge graphic. Hearty congratulations to Mike Sweeney, who won last time’s contest, with “Don’t they know we only stop for swag?” for our trade show cartoon. To see our previous cartoons, visit the Humor section on Data Center Knowledge. (Comment on this)

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