hyperscale storage

Hyperscale storage is the storage of vast quantities of information in media capable of increasing in size rapidly, efficiently, and indefinitely. In a data center, hyperscale storage capacity commonly runs into the petabytes.

Hyperscale storage differs from conventional enterprise storage in several ways, notably the following.

• The sheer scale of the storage space is several orders of magnitude larger in a hyperscale system than in a conventional system (petabytes versus terabytes).
• Hyperscale storage media typically serve millions of users with only a few applications (sometimes only one), whereas in a conventional enterprise scenario there are often fewer users but more applications.
• Hyperscale storage has a minimal set of features and may lack redundancy, because the goal is to maximize the raw storage space and minimize the cost.
• Hyperscale storage tends to be software-defined, focusing on a high degree of automation with a minimum of direct human involvement.

Hyperscale storage is used on the Internet and, to an increasing extent, in database applications. Examples include social media, Webmail, service-provider storage, HPC (high-performance computing), analytics, financial services, fraud detection and monitoring services, weather forecasting, and large government agencies.