Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

Storage grid or storage cluster? Do definitions matter?

Experts disagree during sessions at Storage Networking World
By Deni Connor , Network World , 11/02/2006

ORLANDO — Grid storage and storage clusters — are the terms interchangeable? They could be if you ask users and industry analysts who participated in several panels at Storage Networking World this week.

There was a lot of confusion at this show as to what makes up a storage grid and how it differs from a cluster.

“If I think of the two or three technologies that are known for the greatest amount of conjecture, disagreement and confusion, grids and grid storage would be right up there,” said Simon Robinson, senior analyst for the 451 Group and moderator of the panel on grid infrastructure.

Paul Strong, a distinguished research scientist, has a storage grid installed at eBay in San Jose that consists of two petabytes of capacity. His grid grows by 75 data volumes and 10TB of storage per week.

“At eBay, we consider our grid to be the underlying storage fabric,” said Strong. “The issues we have with the grid is its ability to scale and agility to change. Management of the grid is complicated and hard. We are looking to move away from managing bits, bytes and blocks of data, and deploying software, technology and standards that can manage the grid as a single entity.”

To do so, Strong called for standards and software for managing storage grids. Matthew Brisse, technology strategist in the Office of the CTO at Dell, who presented on grid architectures at the show, agreed.

“We’re not there yet,” said Brisse, adding that much of the middleware software that manages the grid is not available.

Grid standards
Some of the organizations working on developing grid computing standards:

Open Grid Forum Grid Information Retrieval System for Dynamically Reconfigurable Virtual Organization
Storage Networking Industry Association Grid Task Force
Globus Alliance Globus Toolkit, Open Grid Services Architecture
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Web Services Reliable Messaging
Click to see: Grid standards

“Grid-based storage is storage that has grid attributes associated with it, meaning an orchestration middleware layer with its own quality of service capabilities, a scheduling layer that distributes the tasks on the grid, and a set of business policies that manage the cluster of computers and storage,” he said.

Brisse is working with the Storage Networking Industry Association, one of the sponsors of Storage Networking World, which launched a Grid Task Force last year. The objective of the task force is to work with the Open Grid Forum to develop a grid proposal and standards that will help companies deploy grids.

Partner Content

Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

Find out more

Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost -- and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

Download the White Paper

Don't Fall For The Myths

The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.

Download the White Paper

Will You Add Tape Too?

Over two thirds of disk-only users look to add tape back into storage infrastructure according to recent survey.

Download Survey Information

Comment
Login
Forgot your account info?
Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed
Get instant email notification when white papers, webcasts, executive guides are added to our library. Stay informed and up-to-date with the latest on IT Technologies with Network World's Resource Alerts.