Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Björn Kolbeck, Co-Founder and CEO Quobyte
2019 Will See a Major Push for Modernization of the Data Center
If 2019 is anything like the previous year, there will be a
renewed push for modernization in the data center to alleviate the management
complexity, handle the scalability requirements and achieve an improved return
on investment. We will see storage systems improve to handle the rise in
containerized environments, an uptick in software-defined storage solutions and
a return to a tried-and-true approach that has been marginalized in recent years.
1. 2019 will be the year of Kubernetes in the Enterprise
Containers have become an integral part of today's IT
environments for their ability to reduce costs and complexity while enabling
the rapid testing and deployment of applications. While containerized
infrastructures are not new in and of themselves, Kubernetes is still
considered the new kid on the block. However, its ability to make the handling
of the complex IT infrastructure required to run various business-critical
applications easier than ever makes it a rising star. 2019 will be the year
that we will see rising and widespread adoption rates of Kubernetes in the
enterprise.
To ensure the functionality of the Kubernetes platform,
expect to see a rise in technologies that better support containerized
workloads - from application-level service to data-processing frameworks to
storage systems.
2. Latency
and costs will continue to inhibit workloads moving to the cloud
The cloud has been hailed as a great panacea for what was
ailing the data center with companies large and small "moving" to the public
cloud. While there are times that a cloud-based approach can be beneficial,
like cold storage, it is simply too limited to be all things in all situations.
Cloud economics may work to store seldom-used data offsite but does the pricing
remain attractive when you have to get it back? And how long does it take to
restore a substantial volume of information?
For high-performance computing environments, life sciences,
media and entertainment, a cloud environment is simply too costly and too slow
to be effective. Storing information in the cloud is one thing, but leveraging
it as part of a mission-critical workload is not a set-and-forget operation. As
enterprises continue to realize that their workloads are HPC in nature, they
will recognize that they need a scalable, fault-tolerant, high-performance file
system to support their commercial applications.
3. Machine learning will gain ground as
enterprises move from analytics to AI
Knowing that your data has value and knowing how to extract
that value are two entirely separate entities. As enterprises look to better
leverage their business-critical information for increased profit
opportunities, the need for solutions that can handle modern workloads will dramatically
increase. Analytics have been popular with organizations looking to understand
their data; AI and ML are critical for helping organizations do more with their
data. Look for a rise in solutions that can satisfy the processing and speed
requirements of these workloads as the volume of data continues to rise.
4. Enterprises
will look to deploy software-defined storage in Kubernetes, DevOps and Private
Cloud
Likewise, other applications that are making their presences
felt in the data center are changing way IT approaches their data storage
needs. The aforementioned containerized environments, testing infrastructures
and elastic storage require scalability, performance and efficient management
at scale. Software-defined storage systems that deliver excellent performance
on all workloads will see increased adoption rates in the upcoming year. SDS
infrastructures that provide higher IOPs, linear scalability, zero downtime and
the ability to change on the fly to suit shifting business needs will show a
marked improvement over other software and hardware options deployed in
traditional enterprise IT environments today.
5. Smart turns into genius
These increasingly complex, varied
infrastructures place high demands on IT administrators, but the good news is
enterprise IT products get smarter all the time. 2019 will see more capable
products, including more AI and more automation. These products "learn" and
adjust their own operations based on their environment, and require less human
intervention and hands-on management.
Nearly any element in an infrastructure can be controlled
and managed with intelligence: move a file or workload based on traffic
patterns, give a user access to a particular server, ensure legal or
performance isolation of systems, shift data to a cloud, meet an SLA, failover
to another business location, and more. We are only seeing the beginning of how
enterprise products, particularly software, can optimize themselves for
performance, workload, governance, or other requirements.
6. File systems will be rediscovered
Finally, what's old becomes new again. The trend in recent
years has been to deploy different storage types in an attempt to "optimize" it
to corresponding workloads. As such, enterprises were left with storage islands
requiring dedicated resources and management. The file system is the way to
manage and use data more flexibly and easily vs. block or object storage.
Within a single, distributed file system, enterprises can gain high-performance
storage for block workloads, service provider-grade object storage and
small-file workloads with ultra-low latency. This isn't your father's NAS but a
next-generation approach that enables IT to employ the speed and convenience of
the rediscovered technology with the benefits of today's modern approaches.
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About the Author
Björn Kolbeck, Co-Founder and CEO
Before taking over the helm at Quobyte, Björn spent time at Google
working as tech lead for the hotel finder project (2011-2013). He was the lead
developer for the open-source file system XtreemFS (2006-2011). Björn's PhD
thesis dealt with fault-tolerant replication.