Unified storage is a storage system that combines different types of storage—such as block storage, file storage, and object storage—into a single platform or device. This allows users or applications to access and manage various types of data from a single system, regardless of the specific storage format needed for different workloads.Unified storage is commonly used in environments with diverse workloads, such as virtualization, databases, file sharing, and backups. Solutions from companies like NetApp, Dell EMC, and IBM often feature unified storage architectures.
Unified storage is typically used by organizations with diverse data storage needs and complex IT infrastructures, including:
Enterprises often have a wide range of applications requiring different types of storage. Unified storage allows them to centralize data management while supporting various workloads such as databases, virtualization, file sharing, and backups.
Cloud providers need scalable and flexible storage solutions that can handle different types of data, from structured databases to unstructured files and multimedia. Unified storage allows them to offer multiple storage services from a single platform.
Data centers manage enormous amounts of data, requiring different storage architectures for different clients or internal departments. Unified storage simplifies their infrastructure, reduces overhead costs, and optimizes resource utilization.
Virtual machines and virtualized applications benefit from unified storage, as it offers centralized storage management with high performance for block storage (used in virtualization) alongside file and object storage capabilities.
Institutions generate vast amounts of data from experiments, simulations, or studies, requiring file and object storage for unstructured data as well as block storage for transactional data. Unified storage offers them a solution to store and manage everything in one place.
Institutions generate vast amounts of data from experiments, simulations, or studies, requiring file and object storage for unstructured data as well as block storage for transactional data. Unified storage offers them a solution to store and manage everything in one place.
3Gen is an object storage platform that empowers organizations to use Unified storage for unstructured data.
Unified Storage integrates multiple types of data storage—block, file, and object—into a single system, simplifying data management and providing flexibility for various applications and workloads. The architecture of unified storage combines hardware and software to allow different data types to coexist, enabling organizations to store, manage, and access data efficiently without needing separate systems.
Unified storage systems offer numerous advantages for organizations looking to simplify data management, improve scalability, and optimize storage utilization.
Scale-out storage is an architecture designed to accommodate the growing data needs of modern organizations by allowing the storage system to scale dynamically as capacity or performance requirements increase. It provides flexibility in managing data growth by adding storage nodes, often without disrupting operations. In a scale-out architecture, the system consists of multiple storage nodes that work together as a single unit. Each node contains its own CPU, memory, and storage, allowing the system to grow by simply adding more nodes.Scale-out systems often distribute both data and metadata across all nodes, providing high availability and ensuring that the failure of one node does not affect the overall system. .
Scale-out storage is widely adopted across various industries and sectors that deal with large amounts of data, require high scalability, or demand flexible performance. Organizations that need efficient, scalable, and reliable storage solutions are ideal candidates for scale-out storage architectures.
Enterprises that experience rapid data growth, such as in finance, customer transactions, or data logs, need a solution that can scale incrementally as data needs expand. Scale-out storage allows them to grow storage capacity as needed without the high upfront costs of traditional storage systems.
Organizations handling big data require the ability to store and process massive datasets efficiently. Scale-out storage’s distributed architecture is ideal for these workloads because it allows for the parallel processing of data across multiple nodes.
Cloud providers must meet the dynamic and often unpredictable storage needs of their customers. Scale-out storage allows them to add storage nodes on-demand to accommodate varying workloads, ensuring they can deliver the necessary capacity and performance without delays.
Media companies handle large files such as high-definition video, audio, and images. These companies need vast amounts of storage that can grow seamlessly as content libraries expand. Scale-out storage ensures that the performance and capacity can grow as the need for high-quality media content increases.
Healthcare facilities store enormous amounts of data from sources such as MRI, CT scans, and patient records. These are typically large datasets that need to be stored for a long period. Scale-out storage offers flexibility in scaling capacity as the amount of data grows over time.
HPC workloads, such as simulations, computational physics, climate modeling, and genome analysis, require high-throughput, low-latency storage. Scale-out storage allows multiple nodes to work in parallel, offering both the capacity and performance needed for demanding HPC applications.
3Gen is an object storage platform that empowers organizations to use Scale-out storage for unstructured data.
Scale-Out Storage is a method of expanding storage capacity in a system by adding additional hardware resources (typically servers or storage nodes) as needed, rather than upgrading or replacing existing storage systems. This approach contrasts with scale-up storage, where you add resources to a single system. Scale-out storage is widely used in environments requiring large-scale data storage, such as cloud computing, big data analytics, and high-performance computing.
Scale-out storage offers several benefits, particularly for organizations that need flexibility, scalability, and high availability in their storage infrastructure.
