Comment: is cloud storage reliable?

Many companies are beginning to question the services that store data in the "cloud" of the Internet, but despite the limitations of the storage cloud, the risk may be as small as a local storage platform.

The technology behind cloud storage and cloud computing allows organizations to leverage IT resources without having to worry about where those resources are located. So, cloud computing usually means putting the master or backup data in an uncertain storage pool outside the enterprise, rather than in a local data center or a dedicated remote site. Proponents argue that if you use cloud storage services, enterprise organizations can save on investment costs, simplify complex setup and management tasks, and put data in the cloud to make it easier to access data from more places.

Cloud storage: A brand new market

Reducing work and costs is one of the main reasons that cloud services are expected to continue to grow over the next few years. Last year, 4% per cent of global IT spending was spent on cloud services, according to research firm IDC, which would reach 9% by 2012. Data storage is ideal for cloud solutions due to cost and space pressures, and IDC predicts that the share of cloud storage in cloud service spending will increase from 8% to 13% over the same period.

Manufacturers are actively meeting this demand. Amazon has long been a big part of cloud computing, and now its services include a storage service called S3. Nirvanix started providing cloud archiving and backup services in 2007, and some of the big names in the storage sector joined the ranks of EMC's Mozy division and Seagate.

Henry Baltazar, an analyst at Research Institute 451 Group, believes that careful consideration of how to contract with a cloud storage service provider is a step ahead. "At the moment, many people are not paying attention to this service because they are seriously considering whether or not to use cloud storage," Baltazar said. It's a brand new market. ”

But some companies are preparing to make bold attempts. For Adventist Tiyatien in California State, some cloud storage may be part of the data management plan being developed by the medical establishment. Greg McGovern, chief Technology officer at Adventist, said the cloud storage might be as simple as a hospital video on YouTube. He believes that if the most popular video playback and hosting platform is available, medical companies will not need to develop a platform on their own.

Toronto's online ticketing company FreshBooks is also experimenting with Rackspace's "Cloud Files" (Cloud files) storage service, which is expected to begin formally using the service soon to store copies of a large number of document files. As a result, chief executive Mike McDerment said the company would not have to manage the files and infrastructure, after all, it is not FreshBooks's expertise to manage these things. "It's a big advantage to be able to outsource this work," McDerment said. Any business owner needs to figure out what he is good at. ”

How can users be assured of data control and migration?

But handing any it function to outsiders means losing some control. Storage services are causing problems in this area. For many companies, information is the core asset, and if employees and customers don't get information, the company gets bogged down.

Rackspace is a 10-year-old hosting service company that has a testing cloud storage service. Chief technology officer John Engates admits: "No provider is perfect." The best clouds in the world will also come to an outage. ”

What would happen if the service provider that kept your data went awry? How easy is it to get the data back or move the data to another provider? Companies should be prepared to guard against some dangers. However, according to users and industry analysts, the risks that cloud storage poses are not as big as they seem, and are no more troublesome than internal systems.

Benjamin Woo, an analyst at IDC, said it might take a lot of work to get to the point of changing service providers. Woo said: "It's not as simple as saying ' I don't like this provider, I want to change a provider '. "For example, if the new cloud service provider's system is not supported, you may want to change the backup software that is used on your site." Internal strategies and procedures may also have to change, he said.

So far, analysts say, there is no uniform standard in the process of replaying data in the cloud or moving it to another provider. Joe Kvidera, founder and chief executive of Procedo, the company that provides data migration software and services, says there is no common transport mechanism for cloud storage equivalent to Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Because the industry is still in its infancy, he argues, manufacturers choose their own compression, encryption and transmission mechanisms to differentiate themselves from other vendors.

But some vendors are taking steps to give users greater control over the migration process. FreshBooks's McDerment believes it would be easy to move his archive to another cloud. He says the "Cloud file" Application programming Interface (API) provided by Rackspace can be used to write new scripts. At the same time, the API allows FreshBooks to manipulate and organize documents as long as they change the code.

Jim Zierick, president and chief executive of Nirvanix, said Nirvanix also provided a set of APIs that had entered into integration agreements with backup and archiving software vendors such as Atempo, so customers could continue to use their familiar utilities. In addition, Nirvanix provides Cloudnas, which enables the Nirvanix cloud to be like any network attached storage (NAS). Zierick says the software uses a Nirvanix set of APIs to simulate commonly used file systems, such as the Common Internet File System (CIFS) and the Network File System (NFS).

However, migrating large amounts of data from one service provider to another, or from a cloud to an internal storage platform, is a major task. Zierick says Nirvanix's basic services use the public Internet to transfer files, but the company has helped multiple customers lease high-bandwidth lines to transfer large volumes of files to the Nirvanix cloud at once. It even helps customers load data into their clients ' servers and then ship the servers to Nirvanix to unload the data. The company is now negotiating with the storage consulting firm on the provision of migration services.

Procedo's Kvidera says demand for migration services is growing rapidly, and the service is charged at between 5000 and 40000 dollars per migration for 1 TB of data.

Can users get their own data back?

But usability concerns have existed since the advent of the data store itself.

Adventist Tiyatien's chief technology officer, McGovern, remembers using a mainframe 20 years ago, when critical data was backed up to tape. He said that two copies must be made for each data, because some tapes were eventually unreadable and the nightly backup process would take up to seven hours for the mainframe.

"The Internet storage model is more reliable, more cost effective and more secure than any backup model we used in the past," McGovern said. "He believes that the use of internal resources to save data is safe and can be used immediately, but this may be completely an illusion." When it comes to data recovery, the tapes stored in the company's leaky warehouses are not as good as the data in the third party cloud. In any case, McGovern says, IT departments should take proper and correct procedures to ensure that archived data is available.

Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst at Nucleus Research, said that internal storage is one of the most proprietary aspects of it, and that it still has its own cost problems and hidden difficulties.

"If all my data is on a proprietary storage architecture inside my own hardware architecture, is it easier to take this data out and move it to another provider?" said Wettemann. The answer may be no. She says the cost is also probably higher because the company may be spending a lot of money on software and hardware and specialized training.

In addition, companies may have more to offer to cloud storage service providers than to the companies that sell their storage infrastructures, Wettemann said. If something went wrong, the service provider would be more active in satisfying the customer because it would require the customer to pay the subscription fee for the next one months.

When there is no room for manoeuvre, cloud storage providers may be "hostage" to customer data. Engates says the Rackspace company has never been in this situation. Zierick said that while Nirvanix had stated in the contract that it could prevent clients from accessing the data, the company would try to resolve the dispute as far as possible before trying to avoid a deadlock.

Woo of IDC believes there is unlikely to be a serious conflict between cloud storage service providers and customers because the service is simple.