What Type of File System Are You Really Getting?

The cloud's massive success and the growing desire for Big Data analytics are just two of the factors that are making traditional storage architectures obsolete. Organizations cannot afford to scale bygone storage appliances. Even if they could, the time it would take is unacceptable in the digital world. Adding multiple servers could not accommodate storage demands, either. Vertical storage architecture contains bottlenecks that slow performance to a crawl.

Along with cloud and analytics, another technological advancement has emerged in the data center: software-defined storage (SDS). Because SDS decouples the programming that controls storage-related tasks from the physical storage hardware, it dramatically reduces costs associated with hardware. Fewer, less-expensive servers can be used to improve both capacity and performance. Administration is simplified and made more flexible and efficient. SDS enables users to allocate and share storage assets across all workloads.

It's no surprise that SDS has been received with open arms. By 2020, says a recent

Gartner report, anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of unstructured data will be stored and managed on lower-cost hardware supported by software-defined storage.

File Systems and Their Features
Eighty percent of data is unstructured, so storage solutions that offer file systems currently represent 80 percent of the market. While it is widely understood that unstructured data is best managed with a file system, for some reason, many SDS offerings focus solely on block or object store. Few focus on file systems or do them well. Without a file system overlaying this data, it becomes very difficult to manage that data.

Each kind of storage - file system, object and block - has its role to play:

• File systems are a storage standard. They aren't as exciting as the other forms, but they are the best at handling unstructured data.
• There has been a lot of hype around object storage. It is used for machine-to-machine IoT transactions and other applications that require extreme scalability, but it isn't that much better than block when it comes to managing data.
• Block is foundational to storage. It stores virtual machines or databases, but you need files as well to deal with all the unstructured data.

Vendors are in agreement that file systems are important, so some claim to provide file system with their offerings. However, these file systems are usually based on Samba and exclude some features most Windows users are accustomed to.

Samba is a freeware module that enables support for SMB and allows end users to access and use files on the company's intranet or network. However, providing file services through Samba, which is open source, often means going without needed features.

This isn't about users being spoiled with a group of convenient "nice-to-haves"; the importance of features can't be underestimated. It's not just the file system that organizations need in order to deal with unstructured data; file-related features are also necessary. These include:

• Quota: This feature helps you monitor the amount of storage being used. You can set a soft limit quota that will warn you when part of a file system is close to reaching its storage limit but still allow data to be saved. If you set up a hard limit quota, after the quota is reached, no new data can be saved.
• Snapshot: This feature provides a read-only copy of the contents of a file system or independent file set taken at a single point in time. When a snapshot of an independent file set is taken, all files and nested dependent file sets will be included in the snapshot.
• Tiering: Tiered storage is more efficient and boosts performance. A policy enables you to designate where a specific file is to be placed and if and when the file will be migrated between file system pools. You can define both file placement and migration policies. By using a policy, you create a filter which assigns a specific file type to a particular tier.

• Retention: You can automatically create a single folder or a hierarchy of folders on file servers, to be deleted according to assigned policies.

Checking All the Boxes
Software-defined storage is a great boon to enterprises today that find themselves in need of a better solution. However, buyers must beware; the amount of unstructured data pouring into an enterprise requires a file system to manage it, yet most SDS providers offer no file system or one in name only. Turning to open source is no better, as these options lack the necessary feature sets. Ideally, a storage solution will comprise all storage types: object, block and file system. This creates a flexible and robust solution to meet today's increasing storage demands.