by Irshad Raihan, Red Hat Big Data Product Manager

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Machine data is by far the fastest growing component of Big Data and the Internet of Things. Everyday more and more devices are spewing out logs by the second that can be analyzed for patterns and anomalies. Machine data tends to be more credible and rich in insights when compared to human data (think social sentiment).

Many enterprises use machine data analytics to improve process efficiency, identify cyber security threats, and optimize energy usage. Splunk is a market leader in machine data analytics – it’s essentially the Google of machine data. Once the data is collected and stored, Splunk can run dynamic searches that can reveal a number of actionable insights in a timely manner. As you can imagine, Splunk gets better at detecting patterns in the data, as data sets grow larger. Also, a number of regulatory compliance standards require the retention of data for longer periods than ever before.

The combination of the two forcing functions presents a conundrum for Splunk customers. On the one hand they may be looking for patterns in machine data to lower costs and improve efficiency. One the other hand, they now have to spend more to store large volumes of data, and keep it searchable so they can find those patterns more effectively. Traditional storage platforms are expensive and struggle with scaling capacity to keep up with the growth of machine data.

Red Hat Storage Server offers a cost-effective solution to this conundrum. Customers can use Red Hat Storage to build a hybrid model between low latency direct attached storage for “hot” data and a cluster of scalable, highly available storage layer for “cold” data that needs to be retained for much longer periods of time but needs to be included in dynamic searches. Check out this whitepaper by Function1 - a premier Red Hat and Splunk partner and integrator for operational analytics - on using Red Hat Storage Server as a Hybrid Storage Solution for Splunk Enterprise. In addition, hear from Sandeep Khaneja, VP at Function1 about the partnership with Red Hat.

Learn more about the hybrid storage solution for Splunk in this Red Hat webinar.