Object storage or object-based Storage is new-era software that is gaining traction among many organizations. The software replaces traditional storage systems like block and file storage by offering comprehensive features that suit different business levels. Object storage is a versatile system that holds large amounts of unstructured data in distinct units called objects.
The objects store data with relevant metadata and use a globally unique identifier (GUID). The system collects data in the repository and distributes it to multiple storage devices. Object-based storage doesn’t offer hierarchical or block structures like block or file storage. The information is stored in distinct locations with names and unique IDs for easy access.
Reasons for choosing object storage
There is a drastic shift from traditional storage systems to object-based storage. The system comes with advanced features that increase productivity, reduce cost, offer data protection, and are pretty flexible compared to other storage services. The multiple benefits are evident due to increased facilitations on object storage than in traditional systems.
Object Storage allows for easy scaling and removes hierarchy settings. Objects or units have extensible metadata, allowing users to search for data easily. The object stores can resize to multiple petabytes without any restrictions on data geography. Organizations have numerous reasons to implement object storage over traditional storage.
Block storage stores data in blocks which doesn’t scale up properly. The system has data protection issues, especially with HDDs and SSDs. File-based storages store data in a hierarchy procedure and have scalability limitations on the file systems, object count, recovery time, and concurrent/parallel access.
Object Storage capabilities
1. Scalability
Scalability is the primary feature that dignifies object storage over traditional storage systems. The software scalability can grow to multiple petabytes in size without any limitations. The objects or distinct data units are structurally stored in a flat panel in the storage device. This offers room for additional devices and servers parallel to the object-based storage.
Besides the object count and data volume scalability, there are other considerations, such as:
- Capacity limits: Administrators need to check on capacity growth. The user can either increase hardware or software to achieve the capacity goal.
- Object size: organizations should consider object size of the small and large objects. The user should enquire about how object storage can deal with sizes.
- Tiering and caching: businesses should consider how the object storage manages tiering. IT experts should review the caching and tiering to increase scalability. Once capacity grows, automatically, a volume of data will be inactive. The system will move the data to cheaper media. Administrators can incorporate flash media as a caching or tiering layer to increase performance.
- Managing metadata: organization experts need to evaluate the metadata factor. They should supervise how the object storage grows and how it affects the metadata. Always analyze whether the object store’s size affects the metadata’s performance.
- Object access: It’s wise to review all objects’ object growth and access time. The object-based storage should provide access to multiple objects. Note increasing objects or units in an object store shouldn’t increase the access time.
2. Data protection
Object storage systems are paramount to data protection. Businesses are increasingly dealing with multiple unstructured data, which requires high-end security. Object storage offers replication and erasure coding features to cover both logical and physical data damages. The system protects data by creating various storages of the same information. This provides security even in multiple outages on the system.
3. Easy search, indexing, and metadata
Object storage offers different capabilities that ease the data storage process regardless of the volume and size. Organizations can easily retrieve data from object stores easily. The information is kept in a flat structure separated with a minimal amount of logical and physical separation. The data is stored by name or unique identity for easy retrieval.
4. Security
Businesses depend on security to handle customers’ details and avoid data leaks. Most operators separate the data to prevent access to crucial information. Users can implement login credentials to isolate what is public and private. One can utilize encryption keys for each customer or object for every customer.
Object-based storage uses authentication keys provided on HTTP to every object. The keys are considered as the credentials. To avail access to any object/ unit/bucket, permission is granted from a control list. This helps determine individual or group-level access to data. Object storage emphasizes individual object security, meaning the user may require credentials for all objects.
5. Object storage performance
Performance is a significant capability offered by object storage software. Though it wasn’t a first consideration, performance helps in scalability and data protection. Object storage uses have increased from archives and backup repositories to active data structuring, active archives, and repository for different media.
The increased needs require high scaling performance to handle demands in concurrent requests. The concurrency aspect in the system means the ability to manage multiple object streaming and individual requests simultaneously. This calls for a high-performance system, a fact that object storage can offer ease.
Taylor is a freelance SEO copywriter and blogger. His areas of expertise include technology, pop culture, and marketing.
