How will the Internet of Things impact future data centers?

The Internet of Things is more than just an explosion of sensors.

The future of the Internet of Things (IoT) can be inferred from how storage technology develops. One thing is certain: the generation of data and data traffic will increase dramatically.

IoT data is considered unstructured, but in reality there are many data streams, each with its own structure. Much of the stored data is used once and then discarded or archived.

What complicates the whole thing is that the data is used in near real time. For example, when you shop, the store you are in can be located. Personalized ads are often only valid for 1 to 2 seconds.

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Most IoT data is "digested" (e.g., facial recognition translated into a storage location) as it enters a data center. The raw data is stored for a period of time, depending on what it will be used for, and it may eventually be transferred to disk storage. The product of digestion is a new, more valuable data stream. This stream, along with other data, is sent to a powerful analytics engine that uses big data techniques to perform reasoning.

Big data engines are usually in-memory database engines with very large dynamic random access memory (RAM), several processor cores, and PCI-E interface solid-state drives (SSDs). Data is directly imported into memory or saved through SSDs. With the assistance of Hadoop or other distributed storage architectures, GPUs can achieve parallel processing, such as data search, at great speeds. Used data is transferred to SSDs and then stored in layers in massive storage arrays.

Data centers will have a massive number of data feeders and analysis engines. Large-capacity storage will be scale-out object storage, with powerful compression/deduplication and 10TB drives. Network performance will be higher, upgrading from the standard 10Gbe to 25/50GbE. The aggregated bandwidth will be 10 times the current scale, and the backbone network will migrate to 100GbE as the mainstream technology.

In the future of IoT, outbound devices will proliferate, ranging from advertising displays to smart fares and smart road signs.