EDITOR’S QUESTION
THE NEXT
GENERATION
OF STORAGE
TECHNOLOGY IS
IN SOME WAYS
ALREADY HERE
– WE JUST NEED
TO LEARN HOW
TO HARNESS IT.
MICHAEL CADE,
SENIOR GLOBAL
TECHNOLOGIST, VEEAM
and CDs just doesn’t compare and so from
an archiving and backup perspective, it
could be the perfect material.
Progress on the technology has been
extremely promising, with Microsoft and
University of Washington researchers last
year developing the world’s first DNA
storage device that can carry out the
entire process automatically.
s more of our work and
A
personal lives have
become digital, we’ve
seen a staggering
growth in the amount of
data we’re generating,
storing and accessing. According to
various studies, Google processes 3.5
billion searches every day, while 4.3
million videos are watched on YouTube.
By 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes
of data will be created each day globally.
And with around 40% of the world’s
population still to be connected online,
the amount of data we’ll need to store
and manage will skyrocket further.
The staggering amount of data we’re
generating is already causing challenges,
with data centre technologies requiring
significant power and cooling, as well as
ongoing maintenance and monitoring.
We could be moving towards a huge
bottleneck in the capabilities that are
available, as both the volumes and speed
of access to data increase further. What’s
more, hardware such as servers, hard
drives and flash storage can degrade.
One alternative to our current storage
devices could be DNA-based data
storage. Being ultra-compact and easy
to replicate – thanks to its primary role
in creating life – gives DNA two big
advantages. One gram of DNA could
potentially hold as much as 455 exabytes
of data, according to the New Scientist.
That’s more than all the digital data
currently in the world, by a huge margin.
And while DNA is itself quite fragile,
when stored in the right conditions it can
be incredibly stable. Thousand-year-old
fossilised remains have been found with
DNA still intact. The longevity of cassettes
While techniques might be steadily
improving, the time and cost of
decoding the information needs to come
down before DNA data storage can be
used commercially.
The business of backup could be
transformed by DNA. Archives and data
centres, and their immense physical
footprints could be eliminated. The sum
of the world’s knowledge may well one
day be stored on something you need
a microscope to observe. And as we
generate even more data and reach the
limit of our current storage technologies,
the value of powerful alternatives will
only become greater. Today’s complex
backup efforts could be reduced down to
a single record, created once, that lasts
well beyond any living memory. The next
generation of storage technology is in
some ways already here – we just need
to learn how to harness it.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com Issue 17
31