Bridging data-capacity gap in big data storage

Big data is aggressive in its production, and with the merger of Cloud computing and IoT, the huge volumes of data generated are increasingly challenging the storage capacity of data centres. This has led to a growing data-capacity gap in big data storage. Unfortunately, the limitations faced by current storage technologies have severely handicapped their potential to meet the storage demand of big data. Consequently, storage technologies with higher storage density, throughput and lifetime have been researched to overcome this gap. In this paper, we first introduce the working principles of three such emerging storage technologies, and justify their inclusion in the study based on the tremendous advances received by them in the recent past. These storage technologies include Optical data storage, DNA data storage & Holographic data storage. We then evaluate the recent advances received in storage density, throughput and lifetime of these emerging storage technologies, and compare them with the trends and advances in prevailing storage technologies. We finally discuss the implications of their adoption, evaluate their prospects, and highlight the challenges faced by them to bridge the data-capacity gap in big data storage.