DDN Introduces WOS 3.0 Software and WOS7000 Object Storage Appliance

DataDirect Networks, Inc. (DDN) is enabling organizations dealing with web-scale and big data challenges to make strides towards storing, accessing, searching and managing any amount of data at any scale with the release of the company’s distributed object-based storage technology, Web Object Scaler (WOS) 3.0 and new WOS7000 object storage appliance.

             WOS7000

WOS technology deploys storage for the most demanding applications with an object storage software and hardware stack designed to deliver rapid on-premisecloud storage, self-service access to data and accelerated time to insight.

With WOS technology, customers now have an alternative to expensive ‘pay-as-you-go’ public cloud storage services[i], as using DDN’s linearly-scalable, global storage platform can slash total cost of storage by more than 50%.

In contrast to conventional file storage technologies, WOS storage can support and manage more files than any other storage system, shattering scalability limitations by enabling the federation of WOS clusters of up to 983PB and 32 trillion unique objects.

Without the burden of file system bottlenecks, federated WOS technology can deliver more than 200x performance increases over the current peak performance of even the largest public cloud storage services. This includes object retrieval of 256 million objects per second, throughput of over 10TB/s with object retrieval latency of less than 50ms.

WOS 3.0 represents more than five years of investment into scalability breakthroughs to support the largest cloud and data-intensive computing applications and lays the foundation for DDN’s continuing advancements in at-scale, next-generation data protection, resiliency and management.

Speed Intelligent Decision-Making,
Collaboration and Time-to-Insight From Big Data

• WOS 3.0 supports parallel search of user-defined metadata across a distributed WOS cloud of as many as 8,000 WOS cluster nodes. Now, users can index and contextualize petabytes of data in milliseconds versus days, transforming data into information so they can make rapid, intelligent business decisions.
• A fundamental shift in the storage paradigm is at work as WOS technology now integrates with DDN’s GRIDScaler parallel file storage system, powered by DDN’s high performance Storage Fusion Architecture (SFA) storage array technology to tier data from file-based workflows into a simple, scalable WOS archive. This gives users object storage and file storage on a single scale-out platform, where data can be archived for DR or worked on via a ‘follow the sun’ model, maximizing data protection, organizational productivity and speeding time-to-insight.

Scalability and Performance

• A combination of software integrated into high-efficiency, high-density WOS7000 storage appliance hardware, WOS technology can be managed from a single interface to reduce administrative complexity and drive down the TCO.
• Unlike conventional file storage solutions, WOS multi-cluster configuration enables WOS to scale to any dimension as each cluster can support up to 1 trillion objects across 256 WOS object storage servers. A cluster of 32 federated WOS clusters can be architected into a single storage environment capable of servicing over 32 trillion unique object IDs without slowing performance or adding complexity to the environment.
• Performance enhancements are achieved through the architectural design of WOS technology which eschews conventional file system protocols and bottlenecks and aggregates petabytes of data, while protecting data either with erasure coding and synchronous/asynchronous replication or a hybrid combination of the two.
• An implementation of the object storage driver eliminates the need for local file systems and enables the object storage cluster to write native objects directly and contiguously to disk, which eliminates fragmentation, increases performance utilization by up to 10x versus Linux file system-based solutions[ii], and ensures 99% disk capacity utilization.

Improving Long-Term Storage TCO
Preconfigured for rapid deployment, the WOS7000 appliance powered by WOS 3.0 software comes assembled and ready to run production workloads with minimal configuration, removing the guesswork and risk from deploying cloud storage, reducing management overhead, and providing rapid time to value from storage investments.
A next-generation object storage technology, the WOS solution is versatile, efficient and robust, and offers up to 33% more data center capacity versus previous WOS offerings. With over 2.5PB of capacity in a single data center rack, the latest version provides additional savings by minimizing the costs to power, cool and manage the system.

WOS 3.0 and WOS7000 appliance are scheduled for availability in September 2013.

Jean-Luc Chatelain, EVP of strategy and technology, DDN, said: “Organizations everywhere continue to grapple with ever increasing volumes of data, creating business and infrastructure complexity, and importantly, missed opportunity. Traditional storage methods exacerbate issues of data growth by bottlenecking access to large volumes of data and limiting them within the context of single storage paradigms. For businesses seeking to extract value from their big data, our latest version of WOS object storage technology conquers issues of speed and scale to provide rapid time to insight, helping our customers grow their businesses and take advantage of the new era of cloud computing.”

Amita Potnis, senior research analyst, IDC, said: “Unstructured data is growing exponentially and organizations are struggling to retain this data while ensuring long-term rapid accessibility. As a result, businesses are experiencing capacity, performance and scalability issues with traditional NAS solutions. With its latest Web Object Scaler product, DDN is enabling businesses to manage this exponential data growth, by extending its performance and scalability expertise to a new set of cloud tools, and arming customers with archiving, collaboration and DR capabilities.”

Terri McClure, senior analyst, ESG, said: “DDN is one of the companies pioneering the next frontier of object storage and making the case for its adoption. Its WOS 3 product is designed to help users deal with the problem of scalability and exponential growth of unstructured data, while also offering the opportunity to harness the value of that data with integrated search, collaboration and DR capabilities. With this latest release, DDN is building on its history of supporting the most data-intensive applications and forging the next frontier of big data and HPC management.”

[i] According to DDN benchmarking, users can expect to see their costs slashed by up to half of the costs associated with pay-as-you-go models such as Amazon S3 object storage service, when dealing with data volumes at scale.
[ii] Performance utilization increases were seen when comparing WOS technology with the Linux file system-based solution, OpenStack Swift.
[1] According to DDN benchmarking, users can expect to see their costs slashed by up to half of the costs associated with ‘pay-as-you-go’ models such as Amazon S3 object storage service, when dealing with data volumes at scale.
[1] Performance utilization increases were seen when comparing WOS technology with the Linux file system-based solution, OpenStack Swift.