Opening windows:

from the chair

This year's conference presents an opportunity to address two core questions that are increasingly relevant in information:
How will the information technology industry solve tomorrows data storage, access, and management challenges?
What will be the consequence of not being able to meet future data sharing, storage, and maintenance demands?

Data stored globally is expected to grow by 40-60% compounded annually through 2020.  Many factors account for this rapid rate of growth, though one thing is clear – the information technology industry needs to rethink how data is shared, stored and managed.  The rate of growth in storage capacity has out-stripped our ability to backup, move, and manage files and objects efficiently.  This is happening at a time when human resource costs are being reigned-in.

The continued quest for increased network attached storage (NAS) capacity is a core symptom of inefficiency and inadequate storage.  Object-based storage systems introduce a new storage paradigm that breaks with the familiar and thus presents a barrier to change.  The key attraction of a NAS system is that it uses a familiar technology, a familiarity that has its own problems.

NAS systems, including Clustered NAS, involves increasing complexity challenges for data center management.  As NAS storage capacity expands to many Petabytes the ability to quickly and efficiently migrate data between systems grinds to a crawl.  The problem is exacerbated as the average depth of nested directories increases and as the number of files per directory grows.

It mostly seems that scaling up the growth curve counters nearly every gain that can be achieved in IOPS or in throughput capacity.  File system metadata handling  can add an enormous overhead as NAS capacity increases.  When taking account of the obstacles it often seems that the age of the file system as we have known it is drawing to a close.  CIFS/SMB as network file system protocols are victims of the success of network file sharing.

Storage virtualization is happening out of necessity to meet the growing demands of today's data centers where compute virtualization is now the order of the day.  As virtualized capacity increases the negating impact of storage integrity over time begins to take a notable toll.  Raw block storage system failures can bring a business to its knees.

While faced with the greater impact of technological file system limitations, the rapid growth of rich media, expanding email storage, higher throughput requirements to meet consumer client system needs strikes hard at the core of the IT budget.  This is happening at the same time as government regulations are driving harder as new data retention laws, expanded privacy laws, and safe data life-cycle management practices add sensitivities to the operation of data centers.

While considering the impact of growth at the extreme top-end of the data storage operation, it is worth realizing that the mobile data user who is armed with a smartphone is also pushing the boundaries.  Android smartphone users now already use the SMB/CIFS protocol to affect file transfers over a globally connected storage space.

While the older CIFS/SMB protocols appear to be in their last days with SMB2.x taking over at the enterprise end of the storage market it would appear that CIFS/SMB is just taking hold of a new spectrum meeting the storage needs of millions of mobile users.

This year's Samba Experience conference provides a forum for the widest range of storage technologies.  Come along to learn how your organization can benefit from better integration and management of NAS technologies and how Samba can help make your data center more efficient, more effective, and a much more reliable.

I am looking forward to meet you in Göttingen.

Happy New Year and best wishes for a great Samba conference 2012.

- John H Terpstra