In a previous post I introduced the diagram below to emphasize that:
a) SANs introduced a shift in application nearness
b) Scale-out and mobile applications stretched this distance even further
c) Latency-critical applications are pulling the applications closer to the data again
This near to far and back again phenomena does not stop at high-performance enterprise apps. There are several new classes of applications that will continue to close the gap. Many of these applications are server-centric in their storage requirements:
Some of the application use cases that pull the data up into the server layer are as follows:
- Public cloud workloads
- Web-scale applications
- Telco/Network Function Virtualization
- SMB environments
These workloads, when coupled with more distant use cases, emphasize the need for new converged infrastructure (CI) designs. These new designs should be able to handle the disparate distances represented in the diagram above. Before diving into CI, however, it’s worth asking the following question:
Are applications trending even closer to the data?
The answer is yes. In an upcoming post I will introduce another class of applications that requires even more data proximity.
Steve
EMC Fellow
