Self-Healing Storage: When Your Data Fixes Itself

Robert Chen is the VP and CIO of DataNumen, a global leader in data recovery with solutions trusted by Fortune Global 500 companies and customers worldwide.

Self-Healing Storage: When Your Data Fixes Itself

In today’s world which is largely data-driven, it is always important to ensure the integrity, availability and durability of any information that we store. Traditionally, the storage systems that were used relied on manual intervention in order to recover after problems or failures. Today, the exciting development of self-healing storage systems has developed which is able to automatically detect and repair data corruption. This also improves reliability and reduces the time in which you may not be able to have access to your systems. Self-healing systems also do not make human errors that sometimes do come with manual intervention. 

What are self-healing storage systems? 

Self-healing systems are advanced data storage mechanisms that are able to detect, diagnose and fix problems. These problems can include but are not limited to disk failures, bit rot and the corruption of data. They do not require human intervention. 

Examples of techniques that are used by self-healing systems include Checksums and Hashing, Error-Correcting Codes, Replication and Erasure Coding and Machine Learning and AI. 

Self-healing systems mainly work in four ways, namely through detection, diagnosis, repair and verification. Detection happens as the system monitors data integrity via the use of checksums, parity checks and cryptographic hashes. Diagnosis occurs when corruption is found and the system then goes on to identify the affected data blocks and then determine which would be the best data recovery method. Repair involves the system reconstructing lost and corrupted data through error correction algorithms and redundant copies. 

What are the advantages brought by self-healing systems? 

There are many benefits that come from having self-healing systems. One of the biggest advantages is cost efficiency. Hiring IT professionals for a repair can be expensive, even if the repair is actually a quick and easy job which may just appear complex to the average user. Improved data durability is achieved which reduces the chance of permanent data loss happening. Time can be saved as the repair can be quick and there will be no need to outsource an IT professional for a potentially complex job. The repairs can also take place after business hours. Self-healing systems also bring scalability as it is able to work effectively in large-scale distributed storage environments such as cloud storage. 

Many real-world applications use self-healing systems

Today, there are an increasing number of real-world applications that use self-healing systems. These include Cloud Storage (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), Enterprise Storage (NetApp, Dell, EMC), Blockchain and Decentralized Storage (IPFS, Filecoin). Cloud Storage typically works by using self-healing systems in order to ensure data availability and prevent corruption. Through implementing automated error correction, Enterprise Storage is able to heal important data. Blockchain and Decentralized Storage heals itself by using cryptogenic checksums. 

Self-healing storage systems are revolutionary and have transformed our ability to quickly and effectively detect problems. However, they still have flaws and in some cases, human intervention still outweighs the capabilities of what self-healing systems are able to do. Two of the main problems currently associated with self-healing storage systems are performance overhead and complexity. Due to continuous integrity checks, speed is impact which impacts the performance overhead in a bad way. 

Self-healing systems cannot yet match top IT professionals 

AI-driven healing is still in the process of development and a lot of progress needs to be made before it can actually match the abilities of the top IT professionals. Today AI-driven healing is more of an assisted resource for IT professionals though it can solve some simple problems. Implementing AI-driven healing still does require sophisticated algorithms.

The future does look bright for self-healing systems. AI is being improved on a regular basis and it too will see a lot of further developments. In future, some of the exciting developments could include Quantum-Resistant Healing which will assist with next-generation encryption. Autonomous Storage Networks which are fully self-managing infrastructures are an exciting future development as well. 

Self-storage systems are set to provide a major leap in data management which will provide resilience against failures and reduce the need for human involvement. The systems are set to only develop in better ways and in the near future, they will be virtually necessary for all enterprises and cloud providers to have on hand. The self-storage systems are also transforming data management through the automation of fault detection and recovery. They help to ensure enhanced durability and reduced operational costs. 

AI and Predictive Healing will enable systems to predict failures before they actually occur creating a shift from reactive to proactive healing. With Edge and IoT Integration computing expanding, self-healing mechanisms are set to be crucial for distributed, low-latency storage networks. 

Self-storage will be a boost for environmentalism

Most excitingly for environmental enthusiasts, self-storage will increase the environmental friendliness of storage systems. They will minimize data loss and the need for hardware replacements and thus contribute towards creating greener IT infrastructures. 

The future of self-storage systems looks very bright. It can help contribute to a future where data can essentially be stored indefinitely. Right now, we can store data for a long period of time, though there is no certainty that they will be around hundreds of years into the future should the storage portal be deleted.