This year started with predictions about the year ahead in our IT priorities survey for 2022, with increased use of the cloud, the threat from ransomware and the importance of unstructured data set to be key.
So, across the year we tracked storage, backup and archiving as part of the tectonic shift towards the cloud. That manifested in the technologies the cloud pulled in its wake.
This included unstructured data, which has gained increased importance as an immense mass of information built up from human interaction with the internet, as well as a rise in analytics capabilities in scientific and industrial spheres.
Throughout the year we looked at new ways in which structure was being derived from unstructured data and the implications for it in storage.
Object storage and cloud-derived flavours thereof, such as Amazon S3, exert a strong gravitational pull that is not unrelated here.
This is evident in the unification of file and object in on-prem storage from some vendors, the role of S3 as stores for analytics data and its presence in database-like data services such as Snowflake, MongoDB, and so on.
Elsewhere, we also asked if the days are numbered for the Posix standards behind file and block storage and what can replace it in the object storage world.
We also looked at other cloud-influenced but diverse phenomena such as the presence of Kubernetes data management platforms among the big six storage providers’ portfolios, and the emergence of consumption models of storage purchasing that can give a cloud-like experience even in the most on-site of deployments.
Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 stories on emerging trends in storage and backup.
The pandemic and the move to the cloud has driven cloud storage as a key priority, while ransomware and dealing with unstructured data are big concerns.
We look at how to gain structure from unstructured data, via AI/ML analytics to create new records, selecting object data via SQL and storing unstructured files in NoSQL formats.
We look at alternatives to relational databases that have emerged to help bring some structure to unstructured data and gain valuable insight by making it semi-structured.
We look at the three basic ways that storage accesses data – via file, block and object – as well as the ways in which the rise of the cloud and distributed systems have brought changes to them.
We look at object storage versus block access SAN storage and ask if object storage can be used for database workloads, or is it just good for bulk storage of analytics datasets?
We look at Posix compliance in storage and why it is being challenged by object storage and the need to scale much further than Posix-oriented storage was ever intended to.
We look at unified file and object storage products from NetApp, Pure Storage and Scality, the differences, the workloads aimed at, and how unified they actually are.
How to orchestrate the orchestrator: Storage suppliers’ Kubernetes management platforms aim to meet storage and data protection challenges in containerised application environments.
Enterprise 5G will boost the need for storage generally. It will also push capacity needs closer to the edge and create new locations for processing and storage.
We look at the growing list of possibilities when it comes to paying for storage infrastructure, ranging from upfront purchases with upgrades to pure pay-as-you-go options.
