Disk and duplicate data removal technology drives cloud storage

Over the next two years, the data stored in third party cloud storage is expected to grow 4 times times, while data stored on offline tape media is expected to decrease by One-third by 2012.

Disk and duplicate data removal technologies Drive cloud usage

Endless data growth has made it possible to use disk-based backup to ease the pressure on backup windows, freeing up more resources to perform larger backup tasks. And more and more technologies that can improve storage utilization, such as data de-duplication, also push the general application of disk-based backup way. So how do these trends affect people's interest in cloud backup?

As IT organizations are increasingly using BACKUP-TO-DISK to reduce their reliance on tape, the need to keep data in electronic form is growing rapidly. This is an indisputable fact for companies that are deploying duplicate data deletion to conserve network bandwidth and storage capacity. How to transfer data between multiple sites while maintaining data capacity efficiency is a new level of storage efficiency challenge. The offline transfer of data copies will become more attractive to many companies as long as they provide enough wide area network bandwidth, which is the angle the cloud is cutting into.

Cloud level

For the cloud, it is still in a state of nothingness. The cloud can play an important role in the field of data protection. But how to use the cloud in these scenarios is relatively subtle. Data copies can be stored in a cloud container and can be retrieved for data recovery.

Backup software as a service (Backupsortwareasaservice) refers to a service provider supporting the execution of backup tasks by using a web-based backup application and a cloud storage system. Backup software that is, the service can take advantage of pure cloud resources, and can mix a variety of methods, but also can integrate various types of storage together to form cloud storage.

The cloud storage Service provides a third-party cloud-based storage hierarchy to support backup and archiving solutions. Authorized backup products can be docked with the API interface provided by the cloud storage provider to deliver accurate data to the cloud level.

Cloud-based disaster recovery combines cloud computing with cloud storage services to enable business switching to a cloud-based infrastructure.

Risks and benefits

Cloud-based companies view the cloud as a storage hierarchy that has unlimited storage capacity and does not require management at all, and provides a measurable consumption model that can be saved in terms of procurement, installation, configuration, maintenance, and provisioning compared to the physical infrastructure in which it is owned. The cloud hierarchy is also a way to deploy data disaster-recovery systems, and it is better at Headquarters and branch data integration than in building a physical datacenter.

Business organizations tend to worry about data security, access, and control when considering using cloud levels. Data from different organizational departments are placed in different isolation spaces, as is the case for the cloud. So enterprise IT administrators need to be very careful to ensure that data at the cloud level is tightly accessed, and through service level agreements (Servicelevelagreement,sla), SLAs enable enterprise IT departments to get the services they have explicitly reached from the cloud provider.

By recovering some trivial files from the cloud, the RTO in this scenario can be greatly improved as these files are transferred directly from the network and restored locally. Restoring from tape can take a longer time than a tape backup scenario. It is indeed a challenge to worry about the increased RTO generated by the recovery of large amounts of data from the cloud. The time required to restore the entire server or the entire site may not be met by the most conservative RTO, but a physical delivery method can be used to direct the data directly to the disaster.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)