4.3. Use Case 3: Using Red Hat Storage for Content Clouds

Today, smartphones, tablets, and laptops has empowered consumers and enterprise users alike to create and consume multimedia content at an astounding rate, from any place and at any time. The resulting deluge of digital information has created challenges for both traditionally media-intensive industries such as entertainment and internet services, as well as the large number of non-media organizations seeking competitive advantage through content. Media repositories of 100 TB are becoming increasingly common, and multi-petabyte repositories a reality for many organizations, the cost and complexity of building and running media storage systems based on traditional NAS and SAN technologies is overwhelming and often not feasible.
Red Hat Storage Server family provides an open source, scale-out network attached storage (NAS) and object storage software solution that is designed to work seamlessly with industry standard x86 servers. It can easily be deployed on-premise, in private clouds, in public cloud infrastructures or hybrid cloud environments and is optimized for storage intensive enterprise workloads including high-performance computing, nearline archival and rich media content delivery.
Use Case 3: Using Red Hat Storage for Content Clouds

Figure 4.3. Use Case 3: Using Red Hat Storage for Content Clouds


4.3.1. Key Features of Red Hat Storage Server for for Content Clouds Use Case

This section describes the key features of Red Hat Storage for content clouds use case.
  • Elasticity
    Storage volumes are abstracted from hardware, allowing each to be managed independently. Storage can be added or removed from the storage pools while data continues to be available, with no application interruption. Volumes can be expanded or shrink across machines. It can be migrated within the system to rebalance capacity or add/remove systems on-the-fly and scale seamlessly.
  • Petabyte Scalability
    Red Hat Storage Server’s fully distributed architecture and advanced file management algorithms allow it to support multi-petabyte repositories with ease.
  • High Performance
    Red Hat Storage Server enables quick fast file access by algorithmically spreading files evenly throughout the system, without a centralized metadata server. As the nodes can access storage nodes directly, hot spots, choke points, and other I/O bottlenecks are eliminated. Hence, contention for data is reduced and there is no single point of failure.
  • Compatibility
    Due to native POSIX compatibility and support for the SMB, NFS and HTTP protocols, Red Hat Storage Server supports existing applications with no code changes required.
  • Unified File and Object Access
    Files may be accessed through a simple Web Service REST (Representational State Transfer) interface, enabling easy sharing of files across the Internet, without sacrificing the convenience of loading and managing files through native Unix, Linux, and Windows protocols.
  • Reliability
    Replication ensures high levels of data protection and resiliency, even in the event of hardware failure. Self-healing capabilities restore data to the correct state after recovery.