Part 1 of the #thinksustainable series.
Object Storage is the best way to store all the data that is not transactional. No more need for managing multiple tiers of data or having disparate infrastructure. Hard Disk Drive costs are positioned to make HDD only data storage lower cost than any other available storage.
That was 2010. By 2016 managed service providers running large object stores and or managing huge data on HDD only infrastructure for digital storage started looking at maturing their infrastructures. What is driving the maturity shift? The total value of sustainability in data storage is a primary driver. Sustainability are the combined factors attributing to CO2 equivalent (CO2e) production, also expressed as carbon footprint. Materials acquisition, manufacturing, delivery, energy consumption and disposal are the tier 1 and 2 contributions for products and solutions.
Sustainability is not separate and equal from reducing the cost of storing the massively growing data in data infrastructures, technology that is growing at over 16% compounded per year. As data in the infrastructure grows, so does the amount of data that is infrequently accessed (archive data). It is estimated that 65% of all data storage falls into the archive category1. That does not mean that the data is never accessed, only that most of the data is never accessed.
Modern storage administrators of object storage recognize that object storage was meant to be the final solution for data, no management of tiers was planned into the software. Pressure to reduce storage costs and carbon footprints has led these admins and data center directors to look for new ways to store data. On a pure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) basis all these data managers recognize that tape is a lower cost solution but understanding sustainability can be complex.
- IDC data Sphere 2021 - https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US47509621
- IBM product Compare Sustainability 20210901.pptx
- Improving Information Technology Sustainability with Modern Tape Storage - Brad Johns Consulting, LLC – 2021
- https://insic.org/insic-application-systems-and-technology-roadmap/