Five key issues of whether cloud storage is appropriate for the enterprise

These days, cloud storage may have caused a stir in the industry, but some big business users have not decided to choose cloud storage for the time being, at least for now.

At the same time, manufacturers are in the so-called "education model" of some suppliers, telling CIOs, IT managers and other it purchasers to save a lot of money by migrating data to a public cloud or private cloud.

One common view among the two companies is that the adoption of cloud storage is a general trend. After all, cloud storage is technically feasible and cheaper than traditional data storage devices and is becoming more secure.

"It seems to me that the acceptance of the cloud is no different from the acceptance process of Linux 10 years ago," said Johnengates, chief technology officer at the Rackspace hosting service in San Antonio. "People don't fully accept cloud storage overnight." But it happened quietly behind the scenes. The system administrator or developer who needs to work over the weekend has created Linux apps that he showed in Monday as if they were showing a science project. For people, it will take a while to realize that cloud storage is a viable way to accomplish tasks. ”

It takes a lot longer for people to accept cloud storage than to take on a science project. But is it the same principle in your business to process some or even all of the data? Here are answers to five key questions to help you decide whether you should adopt cloud storage.

1, what is cloud storage, how does it work?

You take this question to ask 12 people will get 12 different definitions. In short, cloud storage is a practical service that provides the ability of multiple users or "tenants" to access shared storage pools and access through an Internet connection. The storage cloud is extensible and easy to expand or shrink according to the needs of the user.

2. What are the differences between the public cloud and the private cloud?

A public cloud is a storage tool that is paid for by use. All components are set on the outside of the client's firewall, in a shared infrastructure, and are logical partitions, multi-tenant, and accessible via secure Internet connections.

Public cloud storage providers, such as Amazon.com, have their own simple storage services that typically charge per gigabyte of storage for each month, as well as the bandwidth costs of data being transferred between the cloud and the user. Public cloud users do not require physical storage hardware or any particular internal technical expertise.

Instead, the cloud storage service provider manages the storage infrastructure and centralizes its space to accommodate multi-user needs. Users often access their publicly stored data through an Internet connection.

Private storage clouds often need to be built behind a company's firewall, using hardware and software owned or licensed by the company. All of the company's data is kept in-house and fully controlled by the in-house IT staff. These employees can centralize storage space to achieve access in different departments or be used by different project teams within the company, regardless of their physical location.

In a public cloud, the growth of storage space can quickly and easily be achieved by adding servers to the storage pool. Parascale's cloud-storage products and Caringo's Castor are two good examples of these applications. These applications can be used to set up a private cloud storage system.

Engates describes the definition of a private cloud in the following way: "Users are still in the IT enterprise, software configuration business, storage management and support business, and data center business." You still have to have those IT resources. ”

But there is one exception. In this case, to make it easier for a user to use a private cloud alone, the storage cloud divides a public storage cloud for use. Users need to pay extra for private cloud storage, as if a person needs to pay a higher fee if he wants to stay in a special ward in a hospital.

Essentially, the difference between a public cloud and a private cloud storage depends on how you connect. "Mikemaxey, director of product management at the Parascale company based in California State Cupertino, said. The company's software is designed to aggregate disk storage devices on multiple standard Linux servers to build a single, scalable, privately managed, private storage cloud.

"If you're accessing a wide area network and sharing resources with other users, then that's the public cloud." If your company is a highly fragmented company and needs to build applications, but there is no shared infrastructure, this is helpful. Maxey explained: "If you are trying to stop transient data (transientdata) such as a movie trailer, you may need to run for five months." Storing data temporarily in a public cloud would be the best practice. ”