Before outsourcing enterprise data storage to cloud services, several factors need to be considered, such as performance, security, control, and reliability. One of the biggest challenges in putting data into cloud services is performance. For cloud storage, your data is located outside the enterprise. When data is transferred to cloud services, control is reduced.
Many news hype claims that cloud storage is the ultimate goal of a data storage solution, but in fact, cloud storage (also known as managed storage) is not perfect. If used improperly, the role of cloud storage may outweigh the benefits.
1. Cloud storage: not perfect at all
The secret of cloud storage is unknown.
This is not to say that storing data in a cloud service is completely unworkable. If you know how to properly use cloud services instead of local storage, cloud-based files and data warehouses will create significant value.
First, let's look at the drawbacks of cloud storage, which will help you decide when and where to use cloud services as a storage platform.
2. The disadvantages of managed storage
Before outsourcing enterprise data storage to cloud services, several factors (such as performance, security, control, and reliability) need to be considered:
Cloud storage is slow
One of the biggest challenges in putting data into cloud services is performance. For most IT professionals, the first performance bottleneck comes from a lenient to Web connection.
There are several factors that can affect broadband performance: the contention for network equipment performance from multiple users over the speed of the broadband service (depending on the level of bandwidth you choose). All these factors will affect the speed.
In addition to the speed problem, there is the performance of the cloud datacenter itself and the performance of the entire network. For the latter, this includes web traffic from other customers, shared infrastructure, and the amount of data transferred to the remote datacenter. Having considered these issues, we can see why cloud storage does not provide the same performance as local and networked disks.
In many cases, it takes a few minutes to replicate 2000 megabytes of data using local storage, and for cloud storage, the same operation may take several hours to complete.
Security issues
For cloud storage, your data is located outside the enterprise. Of course, most cloud storage provides VPN, encryption, or other security measures. However, as long as those who attempt to access the data have login credentials, they can access the data through any network endpoint.
This is not just a matter of cloud storage, but all cloud-based technology uses similar connectivity patterns. And, mobile cloud users, especially those who use insecure wireless networks, are easily intercepted and security threats increase.
This means that users using cloud storage must carefully consider potential security issues and deploy appropriate security technologies (such as additional encryption tiers or two-step authentication), which, of course, will affect performance and increase the cost of cloud storage.
(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)