Storage Developments

Originally appeared in the GATF Technology Forecast 2001

By Chuck Gehman

The year 2000 was a big year for storage. With hard drive capacity continuing to increase and prices continuing to drop, storage became more affordable than it’s ever been. And in the graphic arts industry, where we can never have enough storage, this is great news.

But applications like Computer-to-Plate and Digital Media Asset Management continue to increase in popularity and this means we’ll need even more storage to keep up. Fortunately, 2001 looks like it’ll be an even better year for affordable high capacity storage.

Perhaps the biggest news in 2000 was the emergence of Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs) as something that could be purchased off the shelf, instead of requiring high-end integration services to make it work. That trend will continue, and it’ll become even easier with the announced cooperation of major storage vendors like IBM and Compaq to adhere to standards for interoperability of their fibre channel devices.

Workstations are another area where it’s become easier to get the capacity we need. The standard Apple Macintosh G4 machines now come with 40gb Ultra ATA hard drives (these are the less expensive, but relatively high performance PC-compatible drives). A menu choice in the Apple web store will let you select your machine pre-configured with three 72gb Ultra SCSI drives, for both fantastic performance and high capacity (for a total of over 200gb.) This is the kind of storage we only had in servers a couple of years ago.

Last year another important trend emerged, and that is the popularity of CD-R technologies. Virtually replacing other forms of removable media for job submission, these inexpensive devices (less than $300.00 typically) and the even cheaper disks (35 cents in quantity) provide capacity of over 650mb. In addition to job submission, this has made archiving and delivering scans to customers an easy, inexpensive process. For 2001, expect the emergence of two new, similar technologies. First, manufacturers are starting to roll out DDCD (Double Density CD), which provides 1.3gb capacity on a disk with the recording drives slated to retail in the same price range as today’s CDR drives.

Perhaps even more important, 2001 will bring the affordability of DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) recorders. The capacity of this new media is about 4.7gb per disk, and the media cost should fall below three dollars ($3.00) in quantity this year. Unfortunately, there are currently three different DVD data standards (DVD-RW, DVD-R and DVD-RAM) among the various manufacturers, which could cause some interoperability issues. However, the DVD-RAM format is backward compatible with most DVD readers and will most likely emerge as the de-facto standard. Expect to see affordable and network-ready DVD-RAM devices early in the year.

Another big trend that will continue is inexpensive CD and DVD Jukeboxes. There are machines on the market today that can support almost 1 Terabyte of data (assuming 200 DVD disks with a capacity of 4.7gb/ea) for under $2000.00, with acceptable throughput when attached to servers with caching capabilities. This is an incredible price/performance breakthrough, and we’ll see the trend continue. Imagine the potential this brings for access to Asset Management archives and on-line libraries, let alone providing an easy way to maintain access to your customers’ jobs for reprints and re-purposing.

Software for Storage Management is a big area of investment for the big storage vendors like Compaq, EMC and IBM. Vendors like Legato and Veritas continue to enhance their offerings with applications to support these ever increasing capacity systems. We can expect this software to become easier to use and virtually “invisible” as integration becomes tighter with servers.

Finally, a new concept that has emerged in the Internet hosting world will most likely make it’s way to the graphic arts industry. That is the Storage Service Provider (SSP.) SSPs are companies that provide, manage and maintain your storage capacity as an outsourced service. Instead of buying drives and integrating them with your server, you simply contract with an SSP and pay by the megabyte for your storage. Most offer backup services, mirroring and data redundancy as added services. You’ll never run out of space again, because in order to add more capacity, you just make a call or access a web site… no downtime, screwdrivers or hassles.