You may have heard about the “Webscale” phenonemon, in which large cloud-based service providers, including social networks, are required to build massively scaleable data centers. One of the biggest challenges: Scaling storage to match the requirements of Webscale data centers.

By some estimates as many as 50% of data centers will have Webscale requirements by 2017. This week we'll be holding a social chat covering how #webscalestorage has some of the same requirements of networking and computing technology in large data centers: Open standards, commodity hardware, and massively scaleable architectures.

Join us on Thursday at 2PM ET/11AM PT for a #Webscalestorage chat, on which we'll discuss these trends. You can mark your calendars by going to the CrowdChat page, which will we use to run the chat. Coho Data is sponosoring the chat. 

The hallmarks of many webscale technology solutions include more open and flexible technology including a software-defined approach, similiar to what's happening in Software Defined Networking (SDN), whereby open software controls large arrays of massively scaleable hardware. A great example is Facebook's work with the Wedge.

The same trends are taking hold with Webscale storage. The flavor of choice appears to be 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). A survey of 200 enterprise executives and administrators shows that one-half of survey respondents have deployed 10 GbE technology with about 13% more planning to deploy technology within the next year, according to the 2014 State of Web-scale Storage Report, published by Coho Data and Actual Tech Media.

There's clearly a movement to consolidate around Ethernet, because of its simplicity and pervasiveness in networks. Data-center managers indicate the will to consolidate around Ethernet-based storage technologies, which are replacing other storage technologies, including Fibre Channel. A full 87% of respondents are already running some kind of Ethernet-based storage protocol — iSCSI, NFS, or SMB — in their data centers.

But Ethernet is just part of the picture. Webscale storage is a complex issue, and new architectures will be brought to bear. This means introducing new models for storage including a “scale out” architecture, broad standardization, and applying elements of SDN to storage networks, whereby more open and sophisticated software can scaleable masses of commodity hardware.

These are some of the trends we'll take a look at on Thursday in our Webscale storage chat, which will include many experts including real-life storage architects and customers. Go to the CrowdChat page now and mark your calendar.