What is Content-Addressed Storage?

Content-Addressed Storage (CAS) is a storage concept where each data block is assigned a unique address derived from the content of the block itself. This means that the storage location for a data block always remains the same, regardless of where the block is stored in the storage system.

This makes it possible to uniquely identify each file and automatically detect and remove duplicate content. CAS is therefore ideal for use in distributed systems where replicated data is common. The idea of CAS originally came from software project version control. Here, multiple developers often work on a project, and different versions of the same file may exist.

To avoid this situation and ensure that the current version is always used, files are stored in a CAS system. This way, it can be determined at any time whether a specific version of the same content already exists and can be ignored or overwritten if necessary. Today, CAS is also used in other areas; you'll find a list of the most common applications in the next section.

What is Content-Addressed Storage (CAS) used for?

1. Content-Addressed Storage (CAS) is mainly used in enterprise networks and in the cloud to store and manage large amounts of data. It is also used in other applications where it's important to use storage space effectively and avoid data duplication.
   
2. Storage of important business data backups: CAS can help keep the backup system robust and reliable, as corrupted or lost data can be replaced with new copies.
   
3. Hosting of images and videos: Companies that host many images or videos can benefit from using CAS as it's easy to identify and remove duplicates of images or videos to save storage space and costs.
   
4. Archiving of data: CAS is well-suited for data archiving since each data block has a unique address derived from the block's content itself. This means the storage location for a data block always remains the same, regardless of where the block is stored in the storage system.
   
5. Management of digital assets: CAS can help manage digital assets like images, videos, and music quickly and easily.
   
6. Storage of large amounts of data: CAS is well-suited for storing large amounts of data as it's an effective way to avoid data duplication and use storage space efficiently.
   
7. Management of medical images and data: CAS can be used in the medical industry to store and manage medical images and data. By using CAS, duplicates of images and data can be easily identified and removed to save storage space and costs.
   
8. Storage of scientific data: CAS is well-suited for storing scientific data as it's an effective way to avoid data duplication and use storage space efficiently.
   
9. Management of customer data: CAS can be used in customer data storage to avoid duplicates of customer data.
   

The Benefits of CAS

Compared to conventional storage systems, CAS has several decisive advantages:

1. Easy management: CAS offers a simple way to store and manage large amounts of data, as duplicates can be easily identified and removed.
   
2. CAS is extremely fast. Using a content hash ensures that the same storage location is always used. This makes the system much faster than conventional storage systems.
   
3. CAS is very efficient. Avoidance of duplicates: Since each data block in CAS has a unique address derived from the content of the block itself, it's easy to identify and remove duplicate data. This can help use storage space effectively and save costs.
   
4. CAS is reliable. By checking when storing new content, it can be ensured that no data is lost.

Conclusion

CAS is a modern storage system that offers many advantages over conventional systems. Even though it's foreseeable that CAS will be replaced by storage technologies like S3 (Simple Storage Service) in the future, it is widely used and valued in enterprise IT today. Therefore, we expect CAS as a protocol to remain in use for many years to come.

Centera End of Life – We have the solution: The CAS Cloud!

As Backup ONE, we are proud to be one of the few providers of cloud-based Content-Addressed Storage (CAS).

Applications can use both the CAS and S3 protocols independently, making it possible to either migrate existing Centera data in its original format or migrate to S3.

Our CAS solution is excellently suited for storing important enterprise data. The foundation for this storage is our Backup ONE Swiss Cloud, and the CAS environment is provided by our Dell ECS clusters.

Backup ONE CAS Cloud: All the benefits of CAS, no hardware needed

Centera hardware will no longer be supported in 2023, which is why many companies are looking for an alternative for their CAS data. If you currently operate a Dell (EMC) CENTERA environment and want to continue using the CAS protocol, you've come to the right place. Thanks to our high-performance CAS cloud, you can easily and quickly migrate your workloads and continue working without problems afterward. Access is always secured via a dedicated VPN.

We're happy to provide you with a non-binding test environment.

Let us know about your project now to ensure your data can be migrated as soon as possible to meet any maintenance extension deadlines or capacity constraints.

For more information, visit www.onlineecs.com or contact us without obligation by calling us or writing via our contact form.