Today’s storage world would appear to have been divided into three major and mutually exclusive categories: block, file and object storage. The marketing that shapes much of the user demand would appear to suggest that these are three quite distinct animals, and many systems are sold as exclusively either SAN for block, NAS for file or object. And object is often conflated with cloud, a consumption model that can in reality be block, file or object.
A fixed taxonomy that divides the storage world this way is very limiting, and can be confusing; for instance, when we talk about cloud. How should providers and users buy and consume their storage? Are there other classifications that might help in providing storage solutions to meet specific or more general application needs? What about customers who need file access performance beyond what one storage box can provide? Which options support those who want scale-out solution like object storage with file protocol semantics?
To clear up the confusion, the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum is hosting a live Webcast, “Clustered File Systems: No Limits.” In this Webcast we will explore clustered storage solutions that not only provide multiple end users access to shared storage over a network, but allow the storage itself to be distributed and managed over multiple discrete storage systems. You’ll hear:
- General principles and specific clustered and distributed systems and the facilities they provide built on the underlying storage
- Better known file systems like NFS, IBM Spectrum Scale (GPFS) and Lustre, along with a few of the less well known
- How object based systems like S3 have blurred the lines between them and traditional file based solutions
This Webcast should appeal to those interested in exploring some of the different ways of accessing & managing storage, and how that might affect how storage systems are provisioned and consumed. POSIX and other acronyms may be mentioned, but no rocket science beyond a general understanding of the principles of storage will be assumed. Contains no nuts and is suitable for vegans!
As always, our experts will be on hand to answer your questions on the spot. Register now for this October 25th event.
Update: If you missed the live event, it’s now available on-demand. You can also download the webcast slides.