Allow the cloud to store a future

Some manufacturers attract your attention through the marketing language, and some manufacturers use new ways to solve old problems. But as a responsible IT staff, you really need to pay attention to some vendors, because the solutions of these vendors will simplify the current process, greatly reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), provide better it performance, while keeping you in control of the system.

Does it sound too good to be true? Major vendors in this area have launched cloud-based storage solutions that are highly valued and powerful and are constantly overcoming one obstacle after another.

For example, Nirvanix last year launched a cache NAS (network-attached storage) device in the market that could serve as a gateway to the cloud and access the company's cloud-based storage IBuySpy receptacle on local devices ( Storage provides a network: This network can provide nearly unlimited capacity, the device can provide high performance.

This year many other vendors will also bring local NAS device products into the market. These NAS devices can be used as cache gateways for the cloud. For many businesses, these devices can be validated as a way to use cloud storage.

Iron Kings Recent announcements also show how much innovation can be created in cloud storage. Iron Kings has recently launched the virtual file store (VFS: Dummy storage) service device. As a complement to this service, Iron kings has introduced a number of storage-and-service information management products that can be integrated with cloud storage, including data classification, e-discovery, format conversion, and other services.

Among these features, one of the interesting features is the Iron Kings's experience in transferring physical data from tape to a cloud version. For the cloud, the new service is called a "data shuttle." The Iron Kings data shuttle further bridges the local storage and Remote Storage. The data shuttle service uses a "mini cloud" that stores data in a mini cloud that can be exported according to customer requirements. The data shuttle acts on the back of the VFS local cache NAS Gateway, and its role is equivalent to the remote cloud storage directory of Iron Kings. Customers can use a data shuttle to upload or download large amounts of data without worrying about network transmission issues. Because Iron Kings has many years of experience in receiving and outputting traditional physical media data, customers will find that the data shuttle allows them to safely transmit large amounts of information that is as efficient as they can read and write data from their outbound tapes.

In this market, many other manufacturers are also ready to launch new innovative services. We expect to see some new solutions this year that will simultaneously bring the economy of cloud storage to small and midsize enterprises and large enterprises, and they will also bridge local storage and Remote storage in innovative ways. These solutions can overcome the disadvantages of remote Storage and bring a unique set of data capabilities.

In our conversation with end users, we see that there are situations where cloud storage is necessary. We will discuss these usage scenarios in the remainder of the article.

No longer confused with data management

For the past 10 years, many vendors have claimed that their solutions are "global" data management solutions, but the result is that companies have to replace old hardware, endlessly updating software, and constantly buying new technology. It seems hard to have a truly single, continuous global data management solution. When a vendor launches a so-called global data management solution, the sustainability and consistency of the solution is questionable if its software upgrade plan lasts several years. But the cache NAS gateway for cloud storage does provide a single, consistent data management platform.

At its most basic level, the cloud provides an unlimited second tier of storage that simplifies archiving operations to simply migrate data from the primary storage layer to the second-tier cloud storage without continuous maintenance and management. Companies that archive data to cloud storage will be able to get rid of or reduce the complexity of multi-tier, multiple-system data migration strategies and tools to get archived storage out of complex refactoring operations. For those who stubbornly insist on internal storage, these words may be instructive: While low-end storage may seem cost-effective, archiving data to low-end SATA disks requires a lot of hidden costs for ongoing management, power utilization, security, and data protection. Cloud storage is created to take advantage of its economies of scale. The economics of cloud storage will outweigh the benefits of internal solutions, but also provide better availability, data longevity, performance, security, and data integrity.

Stop buying bad storage

Many companies are faced with never-ending project implementations that run counter to the strategic storage plans of the enterprise and, worse, implement poor storage systems that can cause a lot of trouble afterwards. In the worst-case scenario, these projects result in many isolated local storage, independent protection practices, and periodic complex archiving and/or capacity management requirements.

This departure from the strategic planning of storage implementation not only takes a lot of time and effort to manage, but also brings a high risk of data loss. Storage in the cloud can not only replace these practices, but will not produce such results. Software clients or local NAS gateways can easily meet the needs of decentralized applications, provide unlimited storage capacity, and use the best protection to store data-and lower total cost of ownership. If your business is now managing local or unplanned storage, or you're about to implement a project that might force you to deploy non-standard solutions, you should consider cloud storage.

Good storage for important data

While the cloud is suitable for archiving generic unstructured data, for some businesses, their unique type of data really needs cloud storage. There can be many examples, one of which is rich media. The world today is full of rich media data, such as digital pictures and digital video. Organizations that create or manage rich media often find that storage-archiving requirements and storage-protection requirements are growing rapidly. For large users and rich media creators, the cloud may be the only way to provide sufficient storage capacity.

While some managed storage has not achieved the required level of performance and availability in the past, a new generation of cache NAS gateways can provide the ideal storage for rich media or other mission-critical data. In addition, the storage that provides these devices, the service provider, has a good architecture that is better able to protect key data such as rich media than most enterprises.

Meet governance requirements

Finally, no matter what size of enterprises, it is necessary to better information governance. In today's increasingly stringent legal business environment, enterprise information governance requirements from simple to meet regulatory requirements has been covered to the implementation of E Discovery search. For many businesses, the cloud can offer unprecedented service.

Over the past two years, potential cloud storage providers have methodically progressively integrated state-of-the-art classification techniques, search techniques, E-discovery Technologies, and workflows. Today, these vendors are combining these technologies with cloud storage. The entire product is a set of data services that combine cloud storage and search and information processing tools to match similar systems in large enterprises. For midsize enterprises, the services provided by cloud storage are owned by large enterprises that previously had many technical tools and many legal team resources. Through this service, small and medium-sized enterprises in all types of legal disputes (from intellectual property to class action) will not fall downwind.

Cloud storage concerns

Even in the desperate need for cloud storage, many IT workers remain sceptical about cloud storage services. But most of the doubts arose because there was a lack of awareness of the cloud storage power. The following is a brief list of these concerns and the vendor's corresponding solution:

--Security. For customers who want to make cloud storage, security is often the primary business consideration and technical consideration. But many users have more security requirements for cloud storage than they can provide for their own architectures. Even so, faced with such high unrealistic security requirements, many large, reliable cloud storage vendors are also struggling to meet their requirements by building data centers that are much more secure than most enterprise data centers and protecting data in storage with encryption layers and a protective layer comparable to the NSA. Today, users often find that cloud storage has less security vulnerabilities and that cloud storage provides a higher level of security than a user's own data center can provide. For opponents who firmly believe that outbound storage data is not a good practice, they need to be aware that there are many enterprise internal data storage solutions from outbound storage and disaster recovery vendors, such as Iron kings, and that these vendors may have stored your most important outbound tape data.

-Portability. Some users also consider the portability of data when considering managed storage. This is generally guaranteed, and some large service providers offer solutions that promise their data portability is comparable to the best traditional local storage. Some cloud storage combines powerful portable capabilities to transfer the entire dataset to any medium you choose, even to a dedicated storage device.

--Performance and availability. Some of the past managed storage and Remote Storage always had a long latency problem. Similarly, the nature of the internet itself poses a serious threat to service availability. The latest generation of cloud storage has a breakthrough achievement, reflected in the client or local device cache, keeping the most frequently used data locally, effectively easing internet latency issues. With local caching, these devices can mitigate latency problems even when the most severe network outages are encountered. These devices also make it possible for frequently used data to appear as fast as local storage. With a local NAS gateway, cloud storage can even mimic the availability, performance, and visibility of midrange NAS devices while remotely protecting the data to a small number of businesses. Another problem with performance is that these solutions can consume too much internet bandwidth when the rate of data change is too high, and this may cause hidden costs to your cloud storage solution. Even so, vendors will continue to strive for capacity optimization and WAN (WAN) optimizations to minimize data latency.

--data access. Another common concern is whether cloud storage can provide sufficient accessibility if large-scale data requests or data recovery operations are performed. As we discussed earlier, some vendors can transfer large amounts of data to any type of media, sending data directly to the enterprise, and at a faster rate than a copy-and-paste operation. In addition, some vendors can provide a set of components that mimic cloud addresses on fully localized systems, allowing local NAS gateway devices to continue to function without having to be reset. If large manufacturers build more regional facilities, data transfer time will be shortened. More importantly, even if you have a catastrophic loss of local data, vendors can transfer the data back to you.

Many vendors now offer cloud storage services. Some IT industry giants are also providing cloud storage services, such as IBM, EMC, and so on. At the same time, there are many innovative start-up companies in this field, such as Nirvanix and Egnyte. Finally, some credible vendors that are already providing you with data services are entering the market, such as Iron kings.

These vendors have a good reputation and strong business strength, as these vendors enter the market, people have a new look at the performance of cloud storage in data management.

In the coming years, archiving or long-term storage requirements are likely to be the focus, and future cloud storage solutions are likely to significantly improve or change your current long-term storage practices. In our view, these changes and improvements will have a huge impact on core business functions, IT service delivery, and total cost of ownership.