One Ship Does Not A Fleet Make

Imagine a nation that establishes a colony on the other side of a vast ocean. The nation requires raw materials that the colony has in abundance. Likewise, the colony requires manufactured goods that the nation can produce easily with its factories. A trade route is established with a single ship going back and forth across the ocean. The ship loads its cargo holds with raw materials while docked at the colony’s port, and then unloads that cargo in exchange for manufactured goods when at the nation’s port.

This scenario works pretty well for awhile, but eventually both the nation’s and the colony’s populations grow and that single ship is no longer adequate for the amount of cargo to be transported. In response to this increased need a new and larger ship is built. Once again the nation and the colony both enjoy the benefits of the trade route as the new larger ship carries cargo along the trade route for all to enjoy.

But the problem was not solved with a larger ship, because once again the populations of both the nation and the colony grow. So an even bigger ship is built, and the trade route works for awhile once again. Then the populations grow once again. Then an even bigger ship is built once again, etc., etc.

One big ship for all of your cargo may be a disaster waiting to happen! (Click on the image to view source site.)

Then one day someone says “You know what we really need is not a bigger ship, but more ships.”

And so this simple story ends with the nation and the colony deploying a whole fleet of faster and less expensive ships to travel the trade route. The trade route flourishes and the populations continue to grow without being hindered by a trade bottleneck. Plus for being a genius the portrait of the person who suggested that a fleet of ships be built is put on a postage stamp.

What About Your Organization?

Now take this tale of mine and make the following substitutions of the key elements:

• The nation is your organization.
• The colony is your end users and customers.
• The raw materials are the data generated by your end users and customers.
• The factories are your applications.
• The population growth is your organization’s revenues.
• The successive series of larger and larger ships are your traditional storage array technologies.
• And finally, the fleet of ships is a Coho Data storage solution which uses micro arrays and software defined networking to eliminate storage bottlenecks.

Our organizations need to acquire data as quickly as possible in order to feed our applications with. How many orders were placed today? Do we need to hire more staff to fulfill all of those orders? Can we reduce costs by leveraging a new process? When our end users and customers can provide a steady stream of data into our applications which can process that data uninhibited our revenues grow. Yet when we hit a storage bottleneck we do not just encounter a capacity or performance problem; We encounter a business problem that is prohibiting our revenues from growing.

In other words, a storage bottleneck results in less money (and less IT job security too come to think of it). Traditional storage arrays have been used for years with a predictable approach to storage system bottlenecks; When the controller gets overwhelmed, you purchase its successor that can handle more disk shelves and that performs faster. Just keep building bigger and bigger ships for all of your data to reside in.

Multiple Ships, Same Time For Your Data Needs

That approach is no longer working though, if it ever did, and it is no longer our only option. With Coho Data’s solution (DataStream) every single chassis holds two micro array units. Furthermore, each micro array is attached to a pair of switches that use software defined networking technology to intelligently manage data across a multitude of micro arrays. The switches are also connected to the application networks, so now your storage network and your storage array are no longer separate components but are instead a single seamless storage solution.

The result is that our organizations are no longer playing the storage array upgrade game. We can expand our storage system’s capacity, performance, or both without needing to ditch our existing storage solution just to build a new one from scratch. Our organization’s enjoy steady revenue growth without being hindered by a storage bottleneck (and all of the cost associated with being in the “shipbuilding” business).

Instead of being on a sinking ship, why not be the Admiral of a high tech fleet? (Click on the image to view source site.)

Now I don’t know if the founders of Coho Data are going to get their portraits on postage stamps, but it is this kind of intelligent and elegant design that turned me into a huge fan of the Coho Data solution. This is the kind of technology that makes me glad that I am in the IT business. It is this better design for storage that is why I have joined the company, and why I am so enthusiastic about spreading the word on Coho Data. This is game changing technology for all of IT!

So if you want to learn more about Coho Data’s storage solution, reach out to me @ Patrick.Benson@CohoData.com. I will gladly meet with you myself, or I will put you in touch with one of my peers so that you can learn more about the power of a software defined storage and network combo for your infrastructure! My goal is to teach the world about how Coho scales, and how once you eliminate traditional storage bottlenecks you too can enjoy smooth sailing.