Is the network hard disk The cloud storage?

The cloud that swept through the land of China has made "cloud So-and-so" a big noun for pan-socialization. From the home of the common 3C appliances, to go out of the hands of mobile phones, computers, and then to the computer room, data center, and finally extended to the city and industry, now, do not talk about the cloud, you are already "out of man".

Therefore, when we see an application around the sudden "cloud" of the label, the heart will be the question: This is the cloud? In this, a very typical type of representative is the network storage, that is, we commonly known as "network disk."

The rise of network hard disk and the transformation of cloud storage

In fact, the network hard disk is not unfamiliar to us. Remember that seven or eight years ago, when Gmail was just born, someone had issued a related application, using Gmail's massive space to store local data. Then, this approach extends to the use of Google code space to store data. Of course, since the way the remote file was stored was not the service provider's intent (and Google did not have a Web service at the time), it was not promoted. After that, we finally met some professional providers of file storage, such as Rapidshare and the very famous rayfile in the country. The concept of network hard disk.

When the concept of cloud computing swept rampant, involuntarily, the network began to reinvent the wheel, "change" called the so-called cloud storage products. In fact, not only the network disk service provider itself, even the outside world for the network disk and cloud storage and the relationship between the differences are somewhat vague. Recently, Huawei's Dbank network disk (data bank) officially renamed "Huawei Network Disk", was described by many people as a support for Huawei's cloud storage strategy.

Of course, I don't doubt that Huawei is in the cloud computing layout, but Dbank's renaming is not related to cloud storage. Don't you see, even Huawei itself continues to "network disk" this name?

Is cloud storage a network disk?

The network disk and cloud storage, it sounds like the implementation of the "function" very similar-data storage-however, in fact, the two in the underlying architecture and application of the difference is very clear.

From an application point of view, the role of the network disk is more to store data, but the function of cloud storage to contain more content. For now, cloud storage service providers are more willing to build a platform around services that includes file synchronization, work synergy, and multiple application pooling, not just the data.

In the underlying architecture, cloud storage applications include Distributed file system, multi-tenant management and authentication, virtualization and many other technical means. The technical framework of the network disk is relatively simple, taking the user management as an example, the network hard disk only relies on the database management for the user to differentiate, but does not realize the single account multiple authority division, the multi-account cooperation and so on control content.

What's the difference? Analysis of the characteristics of network Yun Storage

Last April, the Global Network Storage Industry Association (Storage Networking Industry Association,snia) officially unveiled the industry's first cloud storage standard. In related documents (accessible http://www.snia.org/tech_activities/publicreview/view), SNIa summarizes the seven major features of cloud storage, respectively:

Ability to scale horizontally

Dynamic Resource Scheduling

Security and Data protection

Storage Service Level Assurance

Automated management, monitoring and optimization

Geographic independence

Multi-access Protocol and mode support

As an early storage industry association, SNIa's published standards and definitions of cloud storage provide us with sufficient reference.

Accordingly, I also have some characteristics of the cloud storage summarized and summarized. For now, I think cloud storage products include at least the following features:

Multi-terminal Support we all know that one important concept that the cloud emphasizes is the distribution of resources. Therefore, in the mobile office, Cross-platform data sharing concept is rampant today, the support of multiple terminals is particularly critical.

Virtualization technology in Wikipedia, cloud storage is defined as "an online storage mode that stores data on a third party storage virtual resource pool." Service Providers virtualize resources and provide them to customers in accordance with their needs. Physically, these resources may be distributed across different servers. ”

The biggest benefit of virtualization technology for cloud storage is the lower cost of data storage, which means that neither the service provider nor the user needs to consider the storage equipment and location of the data. At the same time, virtualization makes the application of resources more efficient.

Amazon, for example, uses Xen environments on its own cloud platform elastic Compute Cloud, which is also based on the platform for cloud storage services. Each user account corresponds to a single virtual machine (instance), and Amazon uses EC2 Compute units to allocate hardware resources for each account.

Amazon's users don't need to know where the data is stored or worry about the cost of wasting resources. Once the resources are not available, the application can be transferred quickly.

Data security and Availability cloud storage in data security and data protection using a wide range of technologies to ensure that the user data is not lost, including: Authentication, digital certificates, data backup (disaster recovery), data transmission encryption (SSL), database encryption and so on technology.

The underlying architecture in response to high I/O data access, cloud storage uses a distributed file system, more common file systems include Mogiledfs and Fastdfs. Many service providers will also be more open source products to build their own file system.

Integration of Third-party services and application consolidation many people believe that the cloud does not actually involve technological change, but a new service model. In fact, we have yet to prove whether the cloud is a breakthrough in technological change, but the innovation in service delivery has been reflected in our eyes.

An important feature of this innovation is the linkage and integration of multiple service providers. This kind of integration brings the convenience of the user is self-evident. In general, common cloud storage is integrated with Google, Salesforce.com and so on services.

In addition, many cloud storage vendors are still building their own service system, to build a larger application of the "Empire." Box.net, for example, has a huge partner Program "innovation receptacle", which includes Appcelerator, Cloud Foundry, Heroku, Rackspace, Snaplogic and Twilio and several other partners.

Pay mode Our common network disk payment mode, is by the service provider in advance to delimit different capacity space, a single file size and file save time and other conditions to form a "package", the user based on the choice of the set of pay. In other words, the user can not choose the required capacity, file retention and other conditions, but only in accordance with the established rules. The delivery model for cloud storage is very different. In fact, because of the underlying cluster architecture and the application of virtualization technology, users can add or reduce capacity in gigabytes at any time, while service providers can deliver and respond quickly.

The SLA agreement is needless to say. SLA agreements have long been a common feature of cloud services offerings

Multi-tenant rights management and content sharing the content shared here is not the way a user tells B users to download an address after uploading a file.

In fact, cloud storage is a service form that can completely change the mode of work, it is the change of content sharing and collaboration. Through the support of the Multi-Tenant User Management protocol (such as IAM), both enterprise and individual can set different identities and profiles to control the visitor's rights. At the same time, different accounts can share the same document content, realize unlimited distance, time CRM platform.

Of course, the content may look like a SaaS platform, not cloud storage. However, as we have mentioned above, from current trends, cloud storage service providers are more willing to build a platform around services that includes file synchronization, work synergy, and multiple application pooling, not just data. Therefore, this is a feature of current cloud storage development.

Through the above interpretation, I believe that you reader has a cloud storage and the difference between the network has a certain understanding. In the current information industry, the concept of cloud to packaging products is not uncommon. Whether these phenomena are new bottles of old wine, or need ourselves to brush off the "cloud."