Storage solutions provider Seagate Technology recently unveiled its newest advancement in data center technology: The Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform.
The company stated that its cloud storage infrastructure mechanism is poised to change the way data center designers view storage architectures, as the platform boosts performance and scalability, and makes the task of data management much easier. Additionally, the Open Storage platform has the capability to decrease average cloud infrastructure total cost of ownership by as much as 50 percent, according to Seagate.
The Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform is intended to prioritize scalability in data center design. The technology allows applications to directly communicate with the storage system, eliminating the need for storage server tiers. According to ZDNet's David Chernicoff, the platform is Ethernet-enabled, which provides open lines of communication needed for the system to function.
Seagate executive vice president Rocky Pimentel said in this new era of cloud systems, the platform optimizes storage solutions for data center design.
"With the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform, our internal R&D teams have designed a unique, first-of-its-kind storage architecture to enable cheaper, more scalable object storage solutions that free up IT professionals from having to invest in hardware and software they don't need, while empowering them with the most innovative storage technology available," Pimentel said.
Seagate research showed that more than 90 percent of stored data, much of which is comprised of pictures and archival information, remains static for an extended period of time. Therefore, providing a solution which allows for as much storage space as possible at a low cost meets the demands of many customer needs, according to Chernicoff.
Data Center Design Benefits
Chernicoff stated that Seagate is adamant about the financial and operational cost cutting benefits of their new storage solution. The platform takes the place of traditional storage servers, which not only decreases the data center layout storage infrastructure and boosts storage density, but also greatly reduces customer spending on hardware and software.
"Seagate believes that the overall costs associated with storage not only are significantly reduced, but that collateral benefits – in terms of reduced staffing requirements and a reduction in power required – will also accrue to adopters of this technology," wrote Chernicoff.
In addition, the platform also boasts improved system performance and data center sustainability, stemming from the fact that data streams are written directly to the drives, which frees up the application server from managing the write process to the hardware, stated Chernicoff. The intelligence on the drives now handle the write process, which could improve the overall efficiency of the storage system by up to 400 percent.
Chernicoff also stated that within the Kinetic Open Storage system, space management is performed by the drives instead of the file system. This can lessen the metadata associated with each drive write by up to 50 percent, further boosting system efficiency. Furthermore, the storage system frees up the CPU by handling common tasks like file copies or moving data between locations.
While Seagate has not announced when the first systems will be made commercially available to system builders, the technology giant plans to be in full production by the time developers have software prepared, Chernicoff wrote.
