Intelligent Data Centres Issue 22 | Page 64

The rise of data applications has impacted storage technology and accelerated unified fast file and object ( UFFO ). Wes van den Berg , VP & GM , Pure Storage UKI , tells us why the emergence of UFFO is fundamental and why it is expected to power the innovation of tomorrow .
ooking back , there are many significant milestones in the

L history of enterprise storage . For instance , we can trace the development of block storage to the early generations of computers , file storage emerging alongside the personal computer , and more recently , object storage rocketing to prominence with the take-off of the web .

Each of these storage workloads fulfil important roles . Applications that draw on file storage have grown more demanding , database applications have become more sophisticated , and the web , IoT , and demand for analytics have caused an explosion in the need for object storage .
But due to the way in which we use data has shifted , the technical silos typically observed between these workloads have created challenges which can no longer be ignored . As a result , we are seeing the emergence of a new category of storage to address the needs of modern data : unified fast file and object storage ( UFFO ).
Catalysing change
A modern data experience , whereby data is easily accessible , commutable and delivered where it is needed instantly , does not respect the technical silos that exist between different environments . In the past , each data workload would largely have resided and been used within its data store . For instance , database applications would have drawn on dedicated block resources ; files would have stayed in file stores and web
applications would have depended upon object storage resources .
This is not to say that both file and object data stores have been neglected from innovation . Fast file emerged to consistently deliver high performance within traditional architectures for small or large files , as well as sequential or random file workloads . However , with modern data requiring all of the above at the same time , its limitations are clear . Similarly , object storage underwent its own transformation . Initially built to house large amounts of non-mission critical data , fast object emerged in direct response to the rise of cloudnative applications . These apps used object as their default storage and so required higher performance levels to process the workloads .
But what if we could bring both together and unleash their benefits in tandem for enterprises ? End-users and IT leaders have asked themselves the same questions over again : if we could have multi-purpose , high-performance , low latency storage at a manageable cost from the outset , would we even have storage tiers and different storage types ?

Unified fast file and fast object storage :

A key milestone in the evolution of storage architecture

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