Storage for the petabyte scale
Scality’s RING Organic Storage is a distributed, or scale-out, storage technology. With RING, the storage is handled by multiple nodes, each of which is equipped with a large number of hard disks (DAS). The nodes can be configured on any commodity x86 server from leading or no-name manufacturers, and the hard disks can be SSD, SAS, or SATA depending of the performance required. Scaling up is as easy as adding nodes to increase capacity, performance or throughput.
RING is built upon object-based storage technology. This means that data is addressed directly without requiring a file system hierarchy. At petabyte scale, filesystems become a problem rather than a solution. Computer file systems were invented in the 1970s. They are great for handling files created on a hard drive, but they cannot handle more than a few hundred million files, and also have great difficulty handling very large files.
Object-based storage technology has been acclaimed by analysts to be the ideal solution for the storage of unstructured data at the petabyte scale. With object-based storage technology, it is possible to handle billions, or even billions of billions, of files within a single namespace. Also, with object-based storage, each object has metadata attached to it. The metadata can be used to set up automatic data storage policies, such as moving data from high-priced, high performance storage media to less expensive, long-term storage, or for deleting data at preset expiration dates.
Self-healing design
RING patented technology makes sure that the data is secure and the storage functional even when disks, servers, or network connection fail. To prevent data loss from such unavoidable occurences, recovery from these types of failure is built into the RING design. RING is self-healing and automatically restores data integrity even when there is an equipment failure or silent data corruption. Because RING is proactive, it does not wait for data to be accessed to detect and repair an error.
Just as a living organism is made of cells that constantly and automatically replenish themselves without harming or impairing the organism, RING Organic Storage is made of nodes that can be added or retired as storage needs evolve. As a result, RING transforms over time: older servers are marked for retirement and taken out of the system, while new, often less expensive, but more powerful servers are added to support growth. In this way, the RING system is always able to leverage the newest, lowest cost hardware without ever having to stop client applications or manually migrate from one system to another.
High Performance: While other object-based storage technologies have been designed for backup only, Scality RING Organic Storage was developed to handle the primary storage of demanding applications. For applications requiring high bandwidth, Scality RING processes multiple GB/s, and for applications requiring random I/Os, it delivers hundreds of thousands of operations per second.
Cost effective: Cost depends on scale, durability and security requirements, among other factors . RING Organic Storage is always cost efficient, because it is sold as software and can leverage exactly the right hardware for any given use. With Scality RING, a high performance NAS installation costs as little at $0.35/GB deployed, and a cloud storage solution may have a TCO as low at $0.02/GB/month.
Secure: Security is multifaceted: it involves protecting data against unauthorized use, as well as against machine or connection failure. Scality RING was designed from the beginning to address these security concerns. With its multitenant option, its undelete and snapshot functions, and support for in-flight and at-rest encryption, Scality RING protects data at every step of the storage and retrieval process.
Patented: RING incorporates field-proven software resulting from several years of research. The software takes full advantage of the following Scality patents:
- WO/2011/072178 – Probabilistic offload engine for distributed hierarchical object storage devices
- WO/2010/080533 – Multipurpose storage system based upon a distributed hashing mechanism with transactional support and failover capability
Standard: RING supports multiple standard protocols to make deployments simple and efficient: HTTP, REST S3, CDMI, FUSE.
Popular options: RING supports popular options such as automatic tiering, RAIN, (an alternative to RAID), synchronous or asynchronous replication across multiple datacenters, snapshots, disaster recovery, multitenancy, and encryption .
FAQ: Find answers to common questions about RING Organic Storage in the FAQ section of this website.