Distributed File System

In a marketplace where the ability to maximize the value of data is critical to business success, organizations need data storage solutions that can improve access to and analysis of data capital. In the past, organizations only expected their distributed file system to be able to scale – it had to be big enough to manage the data today and accommodate data growth tomorrow. High-performance was not necessarily a priority, as most companies assumed that the bulk of file data would be “cold” and wouldn’t need the superfast speeds and minimal latency of “hot” data storage.

Modern workloads have changed that equation though, and today no company wants to be left behind by a distributed file system that can’t keep pace with the requirements of a digital business. Big is no longer enough – today’s storage solutions must be big, fast and efficient. Additionally, a superior distributed file system must offer:

• Lower costs through reduced power consumption and reduced operational expense.
• Improved resource utilization, enabling organizations to get higher ROI from their storage investments.
• Lower total cost of ownership.
• Improved SLAs to meet the strict demands of business needs and compliance requirements.

PowerScale is the industry’s #1 family of scale-out network-attached storage systems. Easy to manage and simple to scale, PowerScale provides a powerful solution for managing and extracting value from unstructured data using built-in analytics support. Isilon solutions are efficient and flexible, with simple-to-use features that stay simple no matter how large your storage capacity grows or how much performance is required.

The PowerScale family of distributed file systems include:

• PowerScale All-Flash, delivering extreme performance and efficiency for the most demanding unstructured data applications and workloads while reducing cost and complexity.
• PowerScale Hybrid, providing a highly versatile yet simple scale-out storage architecture to accelerate access to massive amounts of data while providing support for a broad range of enterprise file workloads.
• PowerScale Archive, providing an ideal active archive storage solution that combines near-primary accessibility, value and ease-of-use, along with options for a deep archive storage that safeguards data efficiently for long-term retention.

With Dell’s distributed file system, organizations can consolidate file workloads and cut costs with 80% utilization, automated tiering and data reduction options.

Dell’s network storage solution delivers the performance and extreme concurrency at scale required to support the most data-hungry analytics platforms. As more organizations turn to artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning (DL) to gain more insight and intelligence from their data, data storage systems are challenged to provide the massive parallel file I/O required to serve a growing number of analytics jobs.

PowerScale helps eliminate I/O bottlenecks and accelerate cycles of learning while conforming to regulatory and enterprise policy requirements. With an ideal infrastructure for AI and DL, Isilon provides:

• Massive parallelism, with hundreds of concurrent data connections with consistent responses.
• Easier management, with features that simplify compliance, protection, security and data management.
• Effortless scaling, growing from terabytes to petabytes with up to 80% storage utilization and 75% data center space reduction.

What is a distributed file system?

A distributed file system is a solution for storing and accessing data based on a client/server architecture. Data is stored on a central storage device but is accessed and processed as if it was stored on a local client machine. With a distributed file system, users on the same network and easily share information in files in a controlled and authorized way.

What are the benefits of a distributed file system?

A distributed file system for storage provides:

• Improved file availability, access time and network efficiency.
• Enhanced scalability and interoperability.
• Data access transparency and location independence.
• A unified view of shared folders and data resources.
• More efficient load-balancing.

What is distributed file system vs. object storage?

A distributed file system stores data as single pieces of information in folders and organizes it in a hierarchical structure, in much the way that paper files are stored. Object storage, on the other hand, designates each piece of data as an object, bundles it with associated metadata and a unique identifier, and keeps it in separate storehouses, forming a storage pool. In addition to distributed file storage, Dell provides an object storage solution in Dell ECS, which can be deployed as a turnkey appliance, a software defined storage solution or a service operated by Dell.