Cloud computing is becoming widespread among businesses of all shapes and sizes. Businesses are always looking for newer, cheaper and safer ways to store data, and it appears that the cloud now fits this growing need. One of the reasons for this is the cloud’s scalable quality, extremely attractive to businesses who are now given the possibility to pay only for what they use. Our past article, which can be found here, gave a general overview of what cloud computing entails and briefly explained the difference between public and private clouds. However, as we mentioned, decisions are made easier with information and it is best to educate oneself beforehand, especially where it concerns storage of what is most valuable.
There was a need for single servers to not only host multiple loads but to be able to shift those loads dynamically and in real-time: the cloud had to be scalable and had to become less expensive. This rapid rise of capability, correlated with reduction in costs, is largely what continues to drive cloud computing today. Hence, hybrid clouds.
The hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment which uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. By allowing workloads to move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs multiply, the hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.
Sensitive or critical workloads can therefore be handled by an on-premises, private cloud while less critical resources (most notably test and development workloads) can be hosted by third-party public cloud providers.
Hybrid clouds are generally used for cold storage, which is designed for the retention of inactive data. Examples of data types for which cold storage may be suitable include information a business is required to keep for regulatory compliance, videos, photographs, and data that is saved for backup, archival or disaster recovery purposes. Data retrieval and response time is, generally, significantly longer than for systems used for active data – by this we mean hours instead of minutes. Because such space is designed to be accessed rarely, if ever, design priorities have included low power consumption, high density, scalability and data durability. Hence, unlike what most laymen tend to think, not all storage needs to be about low latency and retrieval times. Cold storage is an inexpensive way to handle data archiving,
Storage volumes are expected to grow exponentially. By the end of 2020, data storage will top 40 zettabytes: 1.7 MB of new data produced for every person on Earth, every second. This, coupled with ongoing pressures to cut IT costs, is pushing businesses to re-evaluate their infrastructure and sometimes, transform their IT architecture. Cold cloud storage is becoming an important part of this new world.
Providers have been trying to come up with options that accommodate archival uses. Dubbed cold storage, this approach promises an even lower cost. For organizations who need to store data for lengthy time periods of time, cold cloud storage is a good contender.
Another smart model that is starting to appear happens to be the one businesses such as IPzen are offering to theirclients, whereby the client only pays for active data storage. Clients that have selected the “professional” model, in other words, who have more than 500 files to manage, are awarded unlimited storage capabilities. Better deals have rarely been found which meet all needs: a SaaS which offers case management for the entire IP rights lifecycle, watch services, a seamless invoicing solution and unlimited storage provided that I have over 500 active files? Such a system is one-size-fits-all, and for once it really fits all.
