Enterprise Requirements for Petabyte-Scale File Data Management On-Premises and in Cloud

This report, written by By Ken Clipperton, lead analyst for storage, DCIG, LLC, was published on May 7, 2020.

Enterprise Requirements for Petabyte-scale File Data Management On-premises and in the Cloud

Enterprises of all sizes are using unstructured file data in new and varied ways to drive innovation and create value.

Whether they are optimizing retail operations through AI-enabled video analytics or improving healthcare through an in-depth analysis of high-resolution microscopy images, they are capturing file data from more sources and in a greater variety of file sizes than in the past. In turn, they must store multiple petabytes of data to support these new workloads. They need petabyte-scale file data management.

Whether enterprises are driving innovation in the cloud or have simply outgrown their legacy filers, they need a high-performance file solution that can handle this data deluge. At the same time, many enterprises are moving both new and legacy workloads to the cloud. Thus, the file storage supporting these workloads must be available to workloads running in the cloud.

Enterprise Requirements for Petabyte-Scale File Data Management
When it comes to selecting a file storage system to support these demanding workloads, enterprises seek solutions which offer:
• Simple management
• Visibility into bandwidth, latency, and capacity utilization
• Scalability to consolidate many workloads
• Simple incremental scalability
• Flexible deployment options
• Hybrid cloud integration

Comparing Dell EMC Isilon and Qumulo Hybrid File Software on HPE Apollo
The Dell EMC Isilon storage family has a long history in enterprise storage. Thus, Isilon has an extensive set of integrations and a robust partner ecosystem. It can provide many petabytes of file storage capacity, along with essential data protection features, including replication and space-efficient snapshots. It also supports cross-protocol file locking for NFS and SMB, integration with directory services, and broad integration with automation frameworks.

Several of the key leaders that created Isilon founded Qumulo in 2012. As its name implies, the Qumulo hybrid file system runs natively in the cloud. Qumulo provides all of the capabilities listed above, plus high-performance file services for trillions of files in multi-petabyte data sets. This is true on-premises, natively in the public cloud, and as a system that scales across on-premises and public cloud environments