Server Technology

The Server SAN, together with hyperscale and applications defined storage, is the last word in the business storage space. But is Server SAN a unique and disruptive technology or only a different way of putting existing technology together? Here is how to make sense of this storage tendency. Technologists like to believe that the following, large, disruptive technology might be contingent upon a never before believed concept which changes how we consider physics. But simply as cloud computing is based on an adult version of mainframe based, client\/server technology, tomorrow’s massive storage networks might well be based on 1980 era clustering technologies developed by this now defunct Digital Equipment Corp. 

Dave Floyer, co-founder and chief technologies officer of the research company Wikibon, defines a Server SAN as applications led storage constructed on commodity servers with directly connected storage. Functionally speaking, this Server SAN is this convergence of applications defined storage, flash memory along with the hyperscale service marketplace. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and many others that build hugely large networks which need to scale continuously are samples of what Wikibon calls hyperscale. Read: Advantages of Flash in this Data Center – All these hyperscale suppliers are very sensitive to what they must cover technologies and what their customers will pay for their services, according to Wikibon. 

David Vellante, also a co-founder of Wikibon along with the firm’s Chief executive officer, characterizes this Server SAN as a disruptive technology which will change this method IT professionals look at servers along with storage for many years to come. But if the Server SAN is a unique technology or only a different way of putting existing technology together is a problem which still has yet to gain universal agreement. Server SAN Disrupts this Storage Networking Market – For decades we have seen storage function shift away from this server to the SAN, Vellante says. It is shifting back as multicore processors along with flash come into prominence. 

The best I\/O is no I\/O and the closer things move to the processor the faster they will run. So this Server SAN disrupts a $30 billion storage network market. A few of the basic foundations of the storage market prepare the marketplace on its ear, notes Jim Bagley, a senior analyst using this storage consultancy SSG NOW in Austin, TX. Today’s high end commodity drives like the 6 TB rotating discs along with 2 TB SSDs today have intelligence constructed directly into the drive, allowing information processing to be conducted inside the confines of this drive itself, he says. 

The on board intelligence on these drives is further obfuscating these lines of where data processing actually takes place, is it on this server’s CPU or in intelligence constructed into the drives? Certainly the way networks generally and storage particularly were managed in the past carries on to evolve using this technology, says Greg Schulz, founder of this storage consultancy StorageIO along with author of Cloud along with Virtual Data Storage Networking along with virtual data and Virtual Data Centee.