2012年12月12日 星期三

A New Storage Paradigm for Big Data

You can’t open either a technology or business journal these days without seeing an article on the tremendous opportunity Big Data offers in driving new sources of revenue and efficiency. What’s the BIG deal? Yes, data has value. That’s hardly a new concept. Since the time of the first shop, businesspeople have been saving their customer lists, product specifications, and key employee data on stone tablets, papyrus, paper and now digital storage.

The BIG deal is the disruptive value caused by the advent of high performance digital data capture. This technology has made data collection almost free. Internet-based marketing systems auto-magically capture masses of information about prospective customer preferences. Flash-enabled digital movie cameras can be emptied every night and re-used, a far cry from the film model in which every frame was burned on expensive media — which then had to be manually processed and edited. Digital capture systems also enable capture of exponentially more data per event. Social media sites and businesses increasingly create, store and analyze HD video instead of text, at ten to one hundred times more granularity of data per customer or product. The availability of compute power to manipulate this data to create business advantage enables companies like WalMart to maintain and frequently utilize multi-petabyte databases to analyze customer patterns and speed decision making.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. For the first time, solutions are also becoming available which allow for productive analysis of video as well. Finally, the resulting content is being stored forever: after all, that terabyte per day per oilfield of 3D seismic data being collected today might turn into the next decade’s oil find; or today’s genomic profile might be tomorrow’s cure for cancer.

As a result of this “free” data capture, increasing information granularity, more frequent usage and extended data value, businesses, research institutions and governments are growing enormous stores of large unstructured data (increasingly video) that needs to be stored and managed. This result presents a number of challenging data storage problems: extreme scalability; affordability (in general); managing the balance between cost and easy online access; maximizing application and user access; and assuring data durability.

Like the cavalry, a new set of “wide area storage” solutions based on second generation object storage are arriving just in time to help enterprises manage these issues. Object storage is a unique storage architecture utilizing a kind of valet parking ticket system to store and retrieve data. The creator of a piece of data (an object) hands the object to the storage in exchange for an object identifier (the digital equivalent of a valet parking ticket). When the data is later needed, the user hands the system the object identifier, and data is returned. The power of this model is that it is highly scalable — many objects can be stored and retrieved in parallel — and retrieval can be independent of the original application or physical location. Any application or user who gains authorized access to the electronic key can use the data. Historically, this technology has been used to store data in large, containerized archives, but these were limited by the size and performance of the object storage “box.”

What makes the latest generation architecture different is its ability to copy and disperse objects very efficiently across large numbers of independent processing and storage elements, which can even be distributed widely — geographically providing disaster recovery protection without the need for traditional replication. This wide area storage essentially frees object storage from the constraints of a box or even a site.High quality stone mosaic tiles. Wide area storage is similar to storing data in the internet or cloud — data is freed from the traditional boundaries of expensive storage hardware and processes. This results in capabilities which are perfectly suited to the challenges of Big Data: almost infinite scale; low cost per petabyte; the ability to afford 100 percent online data storage; global multi-application access; and a content store which can live forever without ever needing to endure a disruptive data migration.

How does it achieve this? Well first, as previously described, the underlying object storage is natively extremely scalable; unlike systems with centralized indices, if you want to add more data to a wide area storage system, you simply add more objects, which are then dispersed across more scaled out components to add access, performance or storage. And the hardware architecture is scale-out,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. which means if you need more storage, more performance or more communications bandwidth, you just plug in more pre-packaged storage, processors or network capacity, and the system takes care of the rest. Growth is simple.

Second, much like the systems we’ve all read about at Google, wide area storage systems are built under the assumption that individual hardware components will fail. Because objects are copied and dispersed across many storage and geographic resources, a multitude of components can fail while data is continuously available. This “failure-assumed” model allows for wide area storage to operate on lower cost, off-the-shelf disk and processor technologies, which translates to much lower capital cost than traditional disk storage. The ability to defer replacement of failed components also results in lower support and operating costs. And because multiple users and sites can share the system in common, the overhead of storage and disaster protection is shared across all users. No archive silos.

Third, the native cloud-like access model of these new offerings embeds the capability for “wide” geographic and application access, supporting a wide range of uses – from streaming data (like video, sensor information, and genomic sequences) to parallel processing (like Hadoop for analytics). Some solution vendors are also providing easier access for existing applications, including policy-based tiering from traditional disk or the ability to appear like a NAS archive.

Finally, and perhaps most intriguing, these new solutions offer the capability for content, once stored, to never need to be migrated again. This may be the most critical element of all. For any user or technology manager who has endured the pain of unloading a broken, filled or obsolescent NAS or traditional block storage array in order to migrate to the next big thing, with next generation object storage, you never need do this again. This is going to be critical when your Big Data store is holding hundreds of petabytes of high value data.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. Forever.

Last June's derecho storm left thousands of travelers stranded along West Virginia highways, due to a lack of power to pump gasoline from filling stations.

In late October, thousands more were stranded when superstorm Sandy swept through the state, dumping heavy snow and toppling trees.

On Tuesday, thousands of additional travelers spent hours winding their way through a series of detours after a natural gas pipeline exploded along Interstate 77 near Sissonville, sending a wall of flame across the freeway.

A free new information system designed to held travelers cope with such extreme scenarios, as well as more routine encounters with traffic congestion, accidents and severe weather, was unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and state Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox.

The new 511 Traveler Information System is accessible by phone by dialing 511, via the Internet at www.WV511.org,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. by downloading the free WV 511 Drive Safe mobile app for Android and iPhone, or by following WV 511 on Twitter.

By dialing 511 from any landline or mobile phone, travelers can receive traffic information, reports on road and weather conditions, and connect with 511 systems in neighboring states. They can also connect with the state Department of Tourism, and be updated on public safety alerts.

The www.WV511.org website allows users to navigate an interactive map posting the locations of traffic incidents, construction projects and weather advisories. Images from the 20 traffic cameras located across the state can also be viewed, along with the messages and alerts posted on electronic roadboard signs.

The new WV 511 Drive Safe mobile application uses the speakers and GPS capabilities of smartphones to provide audible travel advisories for areas in the traveler's vicinity, allowing drivers to keep both hands on the steering wheel.

The new 511 system makes use of roadway moisture and temperature sensors, traffic cameras, State Police incident reports, reports from DOH maintenance crews and Courtesy Patrol drivers, and data from roadside meteorological stations to provide information to drivers. By having immediate access to such information, drivers can "save time, save money, and maybe even save lives," Mattox said.

"The theme of this system is to 'Know Before You Go,'" Tomblin said. "Having access to real-time information on traffic and road conditions provides advanced warning of road conditions and congestion that can be crucial in increasing safety."

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