4 Selecting the storage layer

 

This chapter covers

  • Defining storage performance, security, and integrity requirements
  • Comparing block and object storage architectures
  • Understanding Parquet and the S3 API as foundational standards
  • Exploring storage solutions including HDFS, MinIO, and Pure Storage

The storage layer is the foundation of any Apache Iceberg lakehouse. While tools for ingestion, cataloging, and querying often receive attention for their immediate impact on user experience, it is the storage layer that ultimately determines the reliability, scalability, and cost-efficiency of the platform. Poor choices here can lead to performance bottlenecks, security gaps, or unsustainable operational complexity. Sound decisions, on the other hand, enable long-term flexibility, reduced costs, and future-proof integrations.

Building on the requirements surfaced during your audit, this chapter guides you through the key dimensions that should shape your storage strategy. We begin by revisiting the most critical requirement categories: performance, security, integrity and cost. With these in mind, we then examine the two main architectural paradigms for lakehouse storage, block storage and object storage, and explain how they differ in structure, access patterns, and suitability for Iceberg workloads.

4.1 Storage requirements

4.1.1 File retrieval performance requirements

4.1.2 Security requirements

4.1.3 Integrity requirements

4.1.4 Cost and operational overhead requirements

4.2 Block vs object

4.2.1 Block storage

4.2.2 Object storage

4.3 The standards in the storage layer

4.3.1 Apache Parquet

4.3.2 The S3 API

4.4 Storage solutions

4.4.1 Vendor Comparison Summary

4.4.2 Hadoop (HDFS)

4.4.3 Amazon S3

4.4.4 Google Cloud Storage

4.4.5 Azure Blob Storage and ADLS

4.4.6 MinIO

4.4.7 Ceph

4.4.8 NetApp StorageGRID

4.4.9 Pure Storage

4.4.10 Dell ECS

4.4.11 Wasabi

4.5 Selecting based on requirements

4.5.1 Performance requirements

4.5.2 Security requirements

4.5.3 Integrity requirements

4.5.4 Cost and operational requirements

4.6 Summary