Advantages and limitations of cloud storage applications

The backup and preservation of the data in the computer is an important part of the day-to-day affairs management of many organizations and individuals however, traditional data backup methods have some drawbacks and limitations: For example, hardware damage caused data destruction. Hardware storage device backup data method, in terms of stability or exposure to a large risk, whether personal users or enterprise users, a little damage to hardware storage devices will cause their data more or less damage to the destruction, it is almost impossible to recover, and people need to pay an expensive price. Second, there is the limit of backup capacity, hard disk storage capacity is limited, it is impossible to store an unlimited amount of documents, data.

Now, a new backup storage scheme is becoming more and more popular with various organizations and individuals, which is cloud storage. As long as the user installs an agent on the host, it can be stored in cloud backup. Whenever a computer is connected to the Internet, the agent automatically detects whether a file needs to be backed up and, if so, copies it to the cloud backup space. Most cloud backup transport services run automatically in the background, and users may not even feel the backup work running.

Cloud storage is actually a new concept developed in the cloud computing concept, refers to the grid technology, cluster applications and Distributed file system functions, the network of a large number of different types of storage devices through the application software together to work together to provide external data storage backup and access to a system. When cloud computing systems process and compute large amounts of data. Cloud computing system must be configured with a large and most storage device, which is the cloud computing system into a cloud storage system, so the real cloud storage is a data storage and management as the core of the cloud computing system. A network that provides resources can actually be considered a "cloud".

Some of the advantages of cloud storage are as follows:

(1) Scalability of capacity

For cloud storage, the capacity of the backup is unlimited, and can be obtained at any time, on demand, to be extended at any time. Organizations or individuals can rely on the unlimited scalability capabilities of the cloud storage service provider without worrying about storage capacity issues. When companies and organizations grow up and suddenly discover that their previous storage space is low, you have to consider adding storage servers to meet existing storage requirements before you can. Then the cloud storage service can conveniently expand the service space on the original foundation, satisfies the demand.

(2) Improve work efficiency

Traditional backup systems typically perform backup tasks at intervals of time, except that all traditional backup applications perform incremental backups of all documents. This means that the difference between a nested backup is just a little bit, and the entire file needs to be backed up.

In certified data centers, cloud providers provide state-of-the-art technology, such as disk-based compression, encryption, backup, and the application of technologies such as server virtualization, storage virtualization, Data de-duplication, and application-optimized data protection. In addition to the security of authentication requirements, most providers can provide 24-hour daily monitoring, management, and reporting that are not available to the average company or organization itself.

(3) Cost and cost savings

With cloud backup services, we don't have to worry about device upgrades, data migrations, or device obsolescence, which are borne by the service provider. Therefore, for the investment in equipment to this, there is a huge savings in money. The use of side-by-side payment mode reduces the cost of backup equipment procurement and implementation of the annoyance. This approach also enables companies, organizations to anticipate and manage capacity growth and operating costs.

(4) Facilitate unified management

When organizing, the company's data volume is very large, or involved in the management of too many, decentralized management is often unable to ensure the consistency of data, employees or users themselves to manage their own storage, often lead to many people do repetitive t, which will lead to inefficient, resulting in the waste of human resources, It is also difficult to control the information effectively, information disclosure and security will become a prominent problem

And the cloud storage of unified management within the same time to solve the above several aspects of the problem. Data in the same management interface for maintenance, users do not have to deal with the data management of their own cumbersome work, reduce the cost of the same time, security issues can be effectively resolved.

(5) Facilitate the enterprise batch digitization

Regulations require companies to keep records and data for years, especially for the media industry, and saving such a large amount of data can be a challenge, because a specific mirror record sometimes requires PB-level storage space. The price of buying a petabyte array from a large storage vendor would be staggering.

By contrast, when scalability and low cost factors are more important than high-speed operating requirements, the use of multiple common server private storage cloud becomes a viable option.

Based on some of the above advantages, this kind of backup method of cloud storage is more and more valued by various companies and organizations, and has been used more and more widely. However, the use of cloud storage in the process, there is a limit, users must be aware of these aspects in order to actively respond to possible future problems.

The limitations of cloud storage are mainly shown in the following areas:

(1) The speed of cloud storage is relatively slow

The speed of the storage is mainly determined by the speed of the broadband, the factors that affect the speed are various, such as the contention of the network speed for many users, the network equipment performance of the service provider. These factors can also affect speed.

In addition to the speed problem, there is the performance that the cloud datacenter itself provides. This includes web traffic from other customers, the total hang infrastructure, and the amount of data transferred to the remote datacenter. So in many cases, it takes a few minutes to replicate 2C bytes of data using local storage, and for cloud storage, the same operation may take an hour to complete considering one r these issues, we can see why cloud storage does not provide the same performance as local disks.

(2) The hidden danger of data leakage

For cloud storage, the data stored is located outside the company. Although most cloud storage providers provide VPN, encryption, or other security measures, they can access data through any network endpoint as long as those who attempt to access the data have login credentials.

This is not just a matter of cloud storage, all cloud-based technologies are similar to the user's connection mode. And the mobile cloud user's login credential information is also very easy to intercept, the security threat also increases.

With any vendor-provided cloud computing service, there are three basic threats that can lead to data leaks: first, cloud computing software configuration errors or software flaws. Second, hackers hack into stealing data. The negligence of employees in handling data.

Therefore, users using cloud storage must carefully consider potential security issues and deploy appropriate security technologies, such as additional encryption layers or authentication, which will affect performance and increase the cost of cloud storage.

(3) Reliability of Use

April 22, 2011, Amazon Cloud Data Center Server large area of disruption, the incident is considered Amazon's history of the most serious cloud security incident. In September 2010, Microsoft apologized to the user for having at least three managed service outages in the last few weeks in the US western time week. This is the first time Microsoft has burst a major cloud computing data breakthrough event. In addition, a number of other international business giants also frequent cloud service disruption

The security problem is the user to the cloud service biggest question and the difficulty. If this problem can be solved, cloud services will be able to get a wider range of applications, and vice versa. Although public storage has a well-known cost advantage, users have to beware of the security and quality of service they have. Since the data is hosted by a third party, the user wants the service provider to ensure data security, neither loss nor unauthorized access, compliance with regulatory requirements for storage system and data retention locations, and the ability to provide low latency, highly available network stone services.

Currently, even if there is a serious cloud storage service interruption event, but many enterprise users are still keen to use the public cloud services, compared to the rapid development of enterprises for IT systems demand costs, some companies are more willing to try innovative it technology and services, in order to change the rapid development of enterprises, even if there is data loss and leakage, They are also coping strategies or willing to take the risk. Therefore, although the cloud storage service still has many uncertain security factors, it is undeniable that its revolutionary innovation, it meets the development needs of many companies.

Cloud storage has many drawbacks, but with technology improvements and proper planning, cloud storage can be a powerful tool for today's businesses.