In this January 2012 report, Aberdeen surveyed the IT community to see how fast their data is growing and how they are dealing with the increasing demand for capacity. From the 106 respondents, Aberdeen identified one key storage technology that large enterprises use to manage Big Data.

1. February, 2012
The Most Important Storage Tool for
Managing Big Data
One of the key IT challenges large enterprises are facing today is how to Analyst Insight
manage and store greater amounts of data without dramatically increasing
Aberdeen’s Insights provide the
their IT spending. In January 2012 Aberdeen surveyed 30 large enterprises analyst perspective of the
spanning various sectors (see sidebar) to hear how fast their data is growing research as drawn from an
and how they are dealing with it. From the 106 respondents, Aberdeen aggregated view of the research
identified one key storage technology that large enterprises are using to surveys, interviews, and
manage Big Data effectively. data analysis
Big Data Trends
Aberdeen asked survey respondents to report on their most pressing IT Survey Respondents
issues. Fifty eight percent (58%) of respondents reported that the growing Individuals answering this
demand for storage capacity is one of their top three IT job pressures, survey came from diverse
making it by far the most widely felt concern among professionals from geographies, industries and
companies of all sizes. corporate roles:
Industries:
Figure 1: Storage Capacity – A Top IT Pressure
√ Government – 19%
70% √ IT Services – 15%
58% √ Education – 9%
60%
% of Companies Surveyed
50% √ Finance – 7%
39% √ Health – 7%
40%
30% 25% √ Industrial – 6%
20% √ Utilities – 6%
10% √ Telecomm – 4%
0% √ Others – 27%
Meeting the increasing Reduced budgets Managing outages Roles:
demands for storage
√ Director and above -51%%
n = 106
√ Managers -31%
Source: Aberdeen Group January 2012
Geography:
The pressure of increasing storage demands was cited 38% more often than √ North America: - 80%
the pressure of dealing with reducing IT budgets, a seeming constant in this
world of doing more with less. √ EMEA - 11%
Aberdeen asked how quickly the demand for storage is rising. On average, √ Rest of World - 8%
the storage capacity required by organizations grew 35% from 2010 to
This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies provide for objective fact-based research and
represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc.
and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group, Inc.

2. The Most Important Tool for Managing Big Data
Page 2
2011. In addition, 8% of all respondents reported that their data grew Company Size Defined
between 90% and140% per year, and another 6% claimed their data grew
For the purposes of this
over 150% per year. document, Aberdeen defines
company size as the following:
Table 1: Data Growth Rates
√ Small (less than 100
All employees)
Small Mid-Sized Large
Respondents √ Mid-sized (Between 100 and
2010 to 2011 1000 employees)
35% 29% 35% 44%
Growth Rate
√ Large (Greater than 1000
Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2012 employees)
The growth of storage capacity is especially troubling for large enterprises, Big Data Checklist
which reported an average growth rate of 44%. This growth rate means that
data capacity needs to double every 1.5 years. Unless organizations get Big Data is a term used to
describe the vast pool of data
smarter and more efficient, they will almost annually need twice the number
organizations are required to
of storage devices, twice the space in the data center, and twice the manage, mine, and store. Three
personnel time and effort to manage their business data. aspects need to be considered
Aberdeen asked IT professionals about the challenges they feel in deploying when managing Big Data:
new storage capacity. √ First there is the total size of
the data stored. Today it is
Figure 2: Challenges of Deploying Storage not unusual to hear of
companies managing
petabytes (PB) or exabytes
45% 41% (EB) of storage (a petabyte is
Percentage of Survey Respondents
40% 1000 terabytes, and an
34%
35% exabyte is 1000 petabytes).
30% 28% 28%
√ The second factor to
25% consider is how fast the data
20% changes. One PB of static,
15% slowly changing data can be
10% managed differently than a
similar volume of data that
5%
changes every month, every
0% week, or every day.
Deploying Understanding Anticipated Cost Deploying
Storage is too the Scope and of Solution Storage is too √ Finally organizations must
Expensive Complexity Complex understand the different data
n = 30 types they handle. Video,
spreadsheets, formatted
Source: Aberdeen Group January 2012 databases, and fully
unstructured data require
Challenges are seen across two dimensions - expense and complexity. The different tools to optimize
rate of data growth exacerbates both of these issues: storage.
• Complexity. Storage deployments are very complex, especially
when compared to deploying other computing devices such as
servers. Concepts such as RAID sets, LUNs, data tiering and thin
provisioning must be provisioned. Several of these features are very
© 2012 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200
www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897

3. The Most Important Tool for Managing Big Data
Page 3
difficult or impossible to change if not setup correctly in the initial
deployment.
• Expense. Enterprise storage arrays can be very expensive,
particularly those that manage TBs (terabytes) of storage. IT
budgeting must be done in a step function, meaning that when their
existing storage array is full, purchasing the next MB of capacity
requires buying a whole new frame costing tens-of-thousands of
dollars. Disks are purchased as volumes grow but frames and
reserve capacity must be planned over time and deployed in
anticipation of data growth.
For more information about Big Data and how to manage it, see the
Aberdeen report Big Data, Big Moves August, 2011.
Scale-Out NAS
In the January survey, Aberdeen asked the 106 organizations about their
storage deployments, and specifically what storage features and tools they
use and what operational benefits they received. One storage tool was
chosen more widely than any other for managing storage pools of 100TB
and above. This storage tool is scale-out Network Attached Storage (NAS).
Rather than having a single array with its own unique operating system, "Verify that the recommended
scale-out NAS is a clustered storage system that allows for connecting many solution will meet
storage devices together into a single virtual system. Scale-out NAS is requirements for future needs
designed for managing unstructured data (information not stored in without a forklift upgrade."
traditional rows and columns of a formal database) including video, audio, ~ IT Manager, Large Oil and
digital images, computer models, PDF files, scanned information, and test Gas Company, US
and simulation data.
Table 2: Scale-Out NAS Statistics
Scale-out NAS
Statistics
Percentage of large enterprises using scale-out NAS 41%
 Average number of nodes 6.25
 Percentage of users with over 15 nodes 21%
Average amount of data in NAS array 260TB
 Percentage with over 100TB 46%
 Percentage with over 1PB 28%
Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2012
A typical scale-out NAS solution consists of three or more nodes. Each
node is a self-contained, rack-mountable device with industry standard disk
drives, processors, memory, and networking, and is unified with a single
version of an operating system. This operating system allows the multiple
© 2012 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200
www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897

4. The Most Important Tool for Managing Big Data
Page 4
modules to be managed as a single unit and gives all nodes access to each
other's data.
As shown in Table 2, 41% of the surveyed large enterprises (companies with
over 1000 employees) currently use scale-out NAS storage in their “After you project storage
infrastructure. The average scale of the NAS deployment is 6.25 nodes and growth, double that estimate.”
contains 260 TB (terabyte) of data. Twenty one percent (21%) of scale out
NAS users reported they had 15 or more nodes, a configuration capable of ~ CIO, Large Government
supporting storage volumes over 1 PB (PB (petabyte) = 1000 TB). Agency, USA
We then compared the storage capabilities between those organizations
with scale-out NAS and those without. We found those that those who use
this technology benefit in the area of managing Big Data.
Table 3: Scale-Out NAS Statistics
Users of Non-Users of
Metrics Scale -out Scale-out
NAS NAS
What percentage did your data grow
52% 32%
between 2010 and 2011?
Percentage of respondents with data
27% 9%
growth rates over 90%
Average total amount of data managed 214TB 50TB
Percentage change in IT spending 2010 to
- 2.2% + .4%
2011
Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2012
Users of scale-out NAS manage very large data stores that are growing very
quickly. Scale-out NAS users are managing, on average databases 4 times the
size of non-users and growing 60% faster. Even with these very high growth
rates, scale-out NAS users have found a way to keep the increasing demand
for storage capacity from greatly affecting their overall IT budget, reporting
on average that they have been able to slightly reduce their spending
between 2010 and 2011.
End User Impact
One very important view of the success of a data storage program is to see
how it impacts the end user. The end users of the surveyed companies most
likely have no idea of what storage technologies their IT department is using
to manage their data. Instead they see factors such as application
performance and application downtime as indicators of a successful IT
operation.
© 2012 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200
www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897

5. The Most Important Tool for Managing Big Data
Page 5
Table 4: End User Satisfaction
Users of Non-Users of
Metrics Scale-out Scale-out
NAS NAS
How has application downtime changed in
- 4.2% - 2.8%
the last 12 months?
On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best),
7.5 6.6
how happy are your end users with IT?
Percentage of end users rating IT
80% 56%
performance 7 or higher.
Source: Aberdeen Group, January 2012
Aberdeen asked the surveyed IT organizations how their application
downtime has changed over the last 12 months and scale-out NAS users
reported a 50% greater improvement in the reduction of application
downtime than non-users. While this reduction in application downtime
cannot be entirely attributed to the use of scale-out NAS, it does have some
influence as loss of data or data access is one of the major causes of
application failure.
Aberdeen asked the survey respondents how they believe their end users
would rate their overall IT performance. This self -assessment may not be
the actual ratings they would achieve from the end users themselves, but IT
employees generally have an understanding of how they are perceived
within their organization.
IT organizations using scale-out NAS believe they are able to satisfy their
end users and achieve a 14% higher rating than non-users. Eighty percent
(80%) of scale-out NAS IT departments believe their end users would rate
them as 7 (good, very good or excellent) or above vs. just 56% of non-
users.
Key Takeaways
The growth of data storage requirements is causing stress in the IT world.
Growth rates of 90% to 100% are not uncommon and require IT
professionals to seek the most efficient ways to deal with data doubling
every year or year and a half.
Organizations that manage large amounts of fast growing data have widely
deployed scale-out NAS arrays to help them manage the expense and
complexity of big data environments:
• Scale-out NAS devices are being used by large organizations with
the largest data storage requirements and the fastest annual data
growth rates.
• Scale-out NAS appears to be allowing their IT professionals to
better manage the data and ensure that storage issues are less likely
to impact their end users.
© 2012 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200
www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897

6. The Most Important Tool for Managing Big Data
Page 6
• Users of this technology are also successfully managing the potential
negative impact on their budgets of having to procure larger and
larger amounts of storage capacity. Scale-out NAS users are able to
hold their budgets flat even though they, on average have to double
their existing storage capacity every year.
Clearly these leaders are meeting the challenges posed of managing big data
and scale out NAS is an important part of their arsenal.
For more information on this or other research topics, please visit
www.aberdeen.com.
Related Research
Three Must-Have Storage Tools for Managing Big Data; January 2012
Small vs. Large Enterprise Data Backup; Same Concept, Different Process; June 2011
High Availability for Virtualized Applications: Protecting Against Unplanned Downtime;
June 2011
Managing Virtualized Applications: Optimizing Dynamic Infrastructures; April 2011
Storage Virtualization: Experience Begets Benefits; February 2011
Small and Mid-Sized Organizations Gain Disaster Recovery Advantages Using Cloud
Storage; December 2010
Author: Dick Csaplar, Senior Research Analyst, Virtualization and Storage
Practice (dick.csaplar@aberdeen.com)
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This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies
provide for objective fact-based research and represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless
otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc. and may not be
reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by
Aberdeen Group, Inc. (2011a)
© 2012 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200
www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897