Every Thing You Need to Know About Cloud Storage

Cloud storage is a critical component of cloud computing, as it holds the information used by applications that are primary to its functioning. Big data analytics, data warehouses, Internet of Things, databases, and backup and archive applications, all rely on some or the other form of data storage architecture

How Does Cloud Storage Work?

Cloud Storage is obtained from a cloud service provider who holds and controls data storage capacity and distributes it as a service. This is done in a pay-as-you-go model these service models are customizable as per the organizations storage requirements. These cloud storage providers manage the data and make it accessible to organizations applications all around the world. The organizations data stored with the CSP’s (cloud service providers) are often more secure and scalable than On-premise data.

Traditional storage protocols or through API’s, applications access cloud storage. Most of the services providers help their clients to collect, manage, secure and analyse data at a large scale.

Advantages of Cloud Storage

In comparison with a traditional storage area networks (SAN), Cloud storage provides ample benefits for the users in terms of cost savings and greater convenience.

• Scalability: with cloud storage, capacity and objects can be expanded and performance enhanced whenever a new node is added to the cloud
• Flexibility: Cloud storage allows for more metadata and enables customized control over data for specific functions, as a result, data can be manipulated based on policy triggers, and it can be scaled based on rules
• Multi-tenancy: Cloud storage was designed with multi-tenancy in mind. For instance, custom metadata provides layers of security and each object or file functions as an autonomous data instance with controlled access policies
• Pay as you go:cloud storage service helps organizations in eliminating the need for big capital expenses as they can opt for flexible billing models where they have to pay only for the storage they use. These expenses are often so less than the cost of maintaining an in-house system.
• Simpler data migrations: cloud storage’s ability to add new nodes and retire old ones when required eliminates disruptive data migrations, making tech refreshes easier
• Less expensive disaster recovery: with cloud storage, data can be automatically replicated from a private cloud to a public cloud or multiple public clouds at a fraction of the cost of building or leasing another data centre.

Cloud Storage Requirements

While considering storage on the cloud, there are few fundamental requirements to be considered to ensure your organization’s critical information is safe, secure, and easily accessible whenever needed

• Durability. Data stored in the cloud should be stored in multiple facilities so that there is no chance of data loss in circumstances such as natural disasters, human errors, or mechanical faults.
• Availability. All the data must be accessible whenever and wherever needed, but there is a dissimilarity among production data and archives. The perfect cloud storage will provide the right balance of retrieval times and cost.
• Security. An organization’s data of any kind is crucial and need a robust security mechanism when stored in the cloud. Ideally, data stored in the cloud is fully encrypted both when the data is being used and when the data is kept still. Same an on-premises storage, Permissions and access controls will be enabled in cloud storage.

Storage on AWS Simplified

We in partnership with AWS offer a complete range of cloud storage services to support application, storage and archival compliance requirements.

As an Advanced Consulting partner to AWS; our AWS Storage competencies spread across multiple domains like Primary Storage, Backup & Recovery, and File Transfer & Data Replication. These capabilities have been vetted, validated, and verified by the AWS Partner Competency Program to support you in:

• File Transfer & Data Replication: Move data from legacy storage solutions to new, AWS storage-based targets including Amazon S3 or Amazon EBS, and accelerate your existing connection to AWS resources.
• Primary Storage: Provide cost-efficient storage resources to your Amazon EC2 based storage targets, such as Amazon EBS and Amazon S3, while maintaining existing legacy Network Attached Storage (NAS) connections.
• Backup & Recovery: Transform traditional backup and recovery operations away from traditional tape or disk targets to use AWS based storage resources as a fast, cost-conscious method of data protection. Use AWS storage such as Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier as the target for backups to provide high durability for AWS workloads.

We use the AWS Storage Gateway and AWS Snowball services to migrate the data from On-prem storage to AWS Cloud Storage. Our team works very closely with the AWS Solution Architects to define the solutions and migration support.

In our effort to beat the curve, we have invested heavily in Engineering and have rolled out offerings that include Cloud Storage as one of the primary solution components; delivering great value to our customers.

As AWS Storage competency partner, we enable you to seamlessly deploy storage solutions across your cloud and on-premise environments by providing you with industry-leading consulting and technology services for a variety of use cases.