Cloud storage Management: not just capacity planning

Global data storage is growing at an unpredictable and doubling rate. As companies strive to improve storage performance as they grow rapidly, some companies are looking for cloud storage services as a solution. This is clearly an opportunity for Yu Yun providers, but they also face the risk of cloud storage management problems and flooding data.

While many enterprises are considering private cloud storage and other virtualization on-demand storage, only a small number of enterprises have the ability to manage these environments. According to a 2011 survey commissioned by 1000 business managers to EMC, only 42% of IT pros think their organization has enough expertise to manage virtualized storage. Less than 18% of people think they have the ability to plan and manage cloud storage environments.

For customers who want to keep all of their data, it can be extremely difficult to strike the right balance between cost and capacity management, which is growing at a rate of 50% a year, according to the survey. At the same time, growing and adjusting the need for archiving and analyzing data makes it necessary for businesses to keep their data longer.

The existing prospects offer an initial revenue opportunity for those with large infrastructure and dedicated to agile development, affordable and stable on-demand cloud storage. These services, which drive the cloud provider's existing data center infrastructure and excessive capacity changes, can provide an opportunity for the relatively simple upward sales of existing users.

Although on-demand storage looks compelling, starting a cloud storage service is not simply creating a Web site for a service and calling it a "cloud." Similarly, cloud storage management requires new strategies to keep budgets and capacity under control.

Cloud storage management requires accurate predictions

As people argue, cloud storage has many definitions, but it is thought that cloud services have the same elements as the National Institute of Standards and Technology: on-demand self-service, resource pooling, fast and flexible, extensive network access and chargeback. To sum up, combine these factors into a highly adaptable and efficient storage solution. They also highlight the challenges of cloud storage management.

As cloud storage becomes increasingly popular with cost-conscious businesses, cloud providers are facing new challenges as they try to occupy the new realm and build a capacity-optimized and efficient on-demand service. This challenge begins with an accurate estimate of resource requirements and a full investment. Accurate forecasts will help cloud providers not only minimize major investments, but also reduce operating costs by minimizing space, energy, refrigeration, and support costs.

Providers should set up cloud storage management and automation tools to enable them to provide speed and efficiency for new systems.

There is a lot of good news coming from the cloud storage front. While some providers are considering supporting the rapid provisioning required for each cloud service, cloud storage requirements are single and predictable relative to the infrastructure, the service environment, which makes it easy for cloud providers to build the right resources for their cloud storage services.

Key to cloud storage management: Storage Virtualization

Cloud storage Management is more than simply investing enough money. Cloud providers need to set up additional elements to ensure the reliability and scalability of on-demand storage solutions, such as through virtualization software to support more efficient pools of storage resources. Storage virtualization software enables providers to consolidate storage systems and ensure a balance between efficiency and scale in cloud storage management. This not only helps cloud providers shrink their physical systems, but also helps reduce the cost of support and operations.

Cloud providers also need tools to optimize resource utilization. Capacity utilization includes data removal from compression, de-duplication to storage snapshot technology. Each technique has a specific use scenario.

Standard compression, by compressing the size of data, is suitable for non-critical applications because the loss of data during compression can be ignored. The data stored in one part of the duplicate data deletion (another) is compared to the previous data, and then the redundant bytes are removed. Unlike standard compression (compressed strings), duplicate data deletion is for files.

The first two types of compression are designed for standard backup applications. For disaster recovery, the cloud provider uses snapshot technology (capturing the status of recent data and recording data that changes).

Service providers build their cloud storage management and infrastructure to support high resource utilization and have an operational model to support HIGH-GROWTH services. By refactoring their base to meet growing resource requirements, cloud providers can be based on the front-end of the cloud storage area.