By Drew Robb | Datamation | September 25th, 2022
Having reached a high state of maturity, it doesn’t get the coverage it once merited. Yet, it remains a vital element and one that generates billions in infrastructure costs on an annual basis. Despite its maturity, though, the storage hardware market continues to evolve. Here are some of the top trends in the storage hardware market:
1. Overcoming Storage Bloat
Data storage started by being connected directly attached to the computer.
The introduction of shared storage, storage area networks (SANs) and network-attached storage (NAS), changed the game relative to efficiency, creating a network of storage devices that could be shared by many computers/servers, drastically improving storage efficiency. So why did the industry regress to direct-attached storage (DAS) and software-defined storage (SDS)?
DAS, after all, is not the most efficient storage architecture. It results in trapped capacity and unwanted copies of data.
“The most likely answer was the ever-increasing cost of shared storage solutions bloated with unnecessary features and proprietary storage stacks,” said Derek Dicker, CEO, Nyriad.
“Businesses and the industry were happy to add the cost and complexity of DAS/SDS, because it was still more economical than buying overpriced SAN/NAS solutions.”
In a sense, the NAS and SAN providers dominated the market to such an extent that some of their solutions became bloated. Inevitably, there was market pushback. The hyperscalers were the most vocal in this transition. They openly stated they would not buy expensive shared storage with unneeded features from large OEMs, Dicker said.
