Transactional Models and their Storage Requirements

We’re all accustomed to transferring money from one bank account to another; a credit to the payer becomes a debit to the payee. But that model uses a specific set of sophisticated techniques to accomplish what appears to be a simple transaction. We’re also aware of how today we can order goods online, or reserve an airline seat over the Internet. Or even simpler, we can update a photograph on Facebook. Can these applications use the same models, or are new techniques required? One of the more important concepts in storage is the notion of transactions, which are used in databases, financials, and other mission critical workloads. However, in the age of cloud and distributed systems, we need to update our thinking about what constitutes a transaction. We need to understand how new theories and techniques allow us to undertake transactional work in the face of unreliable and physically dispersed systems. It’s a topic full of interesting concepts (and lots of acronyms!). In this webcast, we’ll provide a brief tour of traditional transactional systems and their use of storage, we’ll explain new application techniques and transaction models, and we’ll discuss what storage systems need to look like to support these new advances. And yes, we’ll explain all the acronyms and nomenclature too. You will learn: • A brief history of transactional systems from banking to Facebook • How the Internet and distributed systems have changed and how we view transactions • An explanation of the terminology, from ACID to CAP and beyond • How applications, networks & particularly storage have changed to meet these demands