The Storage Muse

Hi there folks! Okay so there are two logical arguments that come up again and again and I want to address them, but in two posts and this is the first.  For this post I want to point out the obvious and put a stake in the ground.  For all of the hubris about cloud object stores I have one simple question what objects are we storing in there?  On the consumer side there is a lot of discussion of digital photos, digital videos, contacts, notes, office productivity documents, etc.  On the enterprise/commercial side largely the biggest use of cloud are things like online backup where companies like Iron Mountain’s desktop backup service is pretty successful.  Well most of what I just listed are well files or services that collect files and send them to a “cloud environment.”  Why is that?  Well the reason is quite simple the devices and applications that all of us use today produce well files, store files, and operate on files.   Here’s an example of a non-PC system that uses and produces files: smart phones — like my iPhone — store pictures as files on a file system and movies as well as files on a file system.  So the simple answer to my question above is that these objects that we are storing in cloud services today are files plain and simple.  With that in mind let’s do a fancy bulleted list to compare some of the often cited reasons for “objects” and see how files rate.

• User permissions - objects must contain enough state such that when the objects are ported to another system the user permission state is persisted.  Well, guess what files can preserve those attributes and that is why things like robo-copy are used to move files from one system to another because ACLs and permissions are preserved
• Self describing format - the object should contain enough information to tell the surrounding systems what can and cannot be done with it. Well, guess what DRMed files — like what is on my AppleTV — are stored with security information included such as expiration time, permission to execute, etc.  Further systems like Microsoft Office include IRM that allows content authors to specify what users can and cannot do with the content.  Finally there are many applications out there that keep or store files in an XML format so that in the event a company goes out of business then the meaning can be regenerated by another program or even by a human — although I have hand edited/hacked Postscript files before
• Explicit/Implicit metadata - objects should have the ability to associate arbitrary metadata with them and also include a set of inherent metadata.  Well, extended attributes, the ability to create files associated to primary files, or even use directory structures to encode metadata are all relevant ways to add arbitrary metadata for files.  Further every file has implicit metadata like the size of the file, the inode number, etc.

I’m sure that there are more, but the point I’m trying to get at is that cloud storage should obviously be about files ladies and gentlemen.  We aren’t storing something new or different, we might be fully making use of the technologies and approaches which were already in place, but underutilized.    So when you next hear the latest cloud guru talking about exotic object storage systems ask a simple question: what are those objects you are talking about?  I suggest that you also follow-up with a healthy dose of: here is my business problem can you solve it at the right, cost, with investment protection (hey this is a nice way of saying that there is a roadmap and you can grow with your vendor), with the right performance and reliability, etc.  After all being a student of the games of billiards one of the key sayings is that a good billiard player can make use of a broomstick to cream someone at the selected game.  This implies that if you use block storage and Hyper-V to solve your problem and you did it in less time than your competition then you’ve done well.

Finally as to the title, well I started out an introduction with a reference to Kermit the Frog and now I will end one as well.

“Time’s fun when you are having files, oops flies.”

P.S.  From my somewhat regular discussions with Intellectual Property attorneys they often point out that patents are obvious and often simple once someone puts their idea on paper.  However before that point many people are baffled.  I think that while this file + cloud concept might be obvious to everyone now that I’m writing about, even my competitors, it needed to be said.