Cloud storage Stealth costs: Data migration and usage costs

As early as the spring of 2009, it was not too difficult to talk about the hidden costs of cloud storage, since cloud storage service providers did not help customers determine the true cost of using the technology. But then, as cloud storage services offer a variety of prices and different features, cloud storage service providers are now starting to provide customers with tools to estimate monthly costs.

When those prospects start browsing the cloud storage Service provider Web site, it's not hard to see the basic fees paid per gigabyte. For example, the basic cost of Amazon WEB services is that the base price for $0.15,zetta is $0.25, which will be cheaper as the amount of data increases. For those archiving cloud storage service providers, they provide additional features, such as worm and information lifecycle management, which are charged per GB $1.00 based on the range of different features.

In this way, customers who are about to buy cloud storage need to calculate how much disk storage they need, and then decide to spend one months on the cloud to store data. Although these sounds simple, but not easy to operate, in real terms, few service providers tell customers that the real cost is not just basic storage costs.

Migrating data on cloud storage

Any service provider will charge the cost of migrating or removing data on cloud storage based on the amount of data transmitted, generally $0.10 per GB. Some cloud services also charge for the functionality of the metadata, such as listing the attributes of a folder or file and copying or deleting files. But these costs are worth less than those based on the number of operating times (Amazon will be up to 1000 $0.01 per charge) and will increase as the number of customers accessing the cloud stores increases.

Cloud storage Charges Another problem is how customers actually access the data that is stored on the cloud. Some cloud storage service providers, including Autonomy Zantaz and Iron Kings Inc., support private data lanes so that customers ' own architectures and cloud storage can be connected together. Other providers, such as Zetta, based on the differences in storage data types and the way they are accessed, will provide a maximum of 20% on the basis of total monthly consumption.

Perhaps the most obscure part of cloud storage charges is the massive data migration into cloud storage and the removal of data. Some service providers, such as Zetta, do not charge for data migration into cloud storage. However, other cloud storage service providers, like Amazon, have developed a large scale data migration charge for mobile storage media, charging for different data transfer times and charging fees for using mobile devices.

Estimating the cost of cloud storage in advance

The customer needs to gather all this information and consider whether each cloud storage request is really needed. In this way, a comprehensive data migration plan is critical, and virus scanning, indexing services, and backup software all require a good configuration so that they do not access files on the cloud as they would access other network hard disks.

Cloud technology is still evolving, and cloud storage providers can provide sophisticated cost analysis tools so they can help potential customers determine the exact cost. Of course, these are the information customers need to determine the potential consumption, such as data transmission, bulk loading, network and the use of on-site equipment.