Everything You Need to Know About Cloud Storage

Are you overfeeding your mainframe or server? It’s happening to businesses more and more. As it generally goes with physical structures, there’s only a finite amount of content these guys can store. And as the IT landscape continues to change and the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence continue to evolve, the amount of data you’re collecting becomes greater than the space available to accommodate it.

This is why more and more companies are turning to the cloud for storage. It offers a virtually limitless amount of space to hold all of your information, along with a host of other benefits.

Cloud storage is a service model in which data is maintained, managed and backed up on remote servers that live on the internet, or “cloud.” It’s purchased through a third-party vendor that manages the capacity, security and availability of your data, making it accessible wherever you are and whenever you need it.

You already know of several providers of cloud storage services, you just don’t think of them in that way. Gmail and other email service providers are examples, as your messages and attachments are stored and retrievable through the internet. Google Docs and Dropbox are other examples. Youtube too, as well as Facebook and other social media platforms, since your content lives on their sites’ servers.

The benefits of cloud storage go well beyond freeing up space in your data center. Let’s start with Total Cost of Ownership. Storage on the cloud eliminates the need to buy your own data storage infrastructure or having to maintain it. You also have the flexibility to add or remove capacity on demand and only pay for storage and services that you are actually using. And if you happen to get hit with unplanned downtime, you don’t have to worry about lost data.

That last point is one of the most common use cases for cloud storage: having a backup in case your hard drive dies. Businesses need to be prepared and cloud storage is a key to any disaster recovery plan. (While we’re on the subject, check out our whitepaper on disaster recovery, “IT Disaster Recovery Planning: Essential to Business Survival”). Virtual storage has also become a cost-savings tool in the DevOps environment, allowing engineers to spin up and spin down their compute and storage resources as needed, making for a more agile development process.

There are many cloud-based storage options out there, with Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft Azure being the most prominent. Most provide the same main services but some offer more in terms of security and flexibility, so it really comes down to the amount of space you need and how much budget you can throw at it. This article from The Verge may help you choose which cloud storage service is the one for you.

If you’re looking to turn to the cloud for storage, talk to us!

Astound’s Virtual Cross Connect (VXC) offers a high-speed, reliable and affordable option to extend your network through private, direct connections with AWS, Azure and other large hosting services.

For those companies that deploy a hybrid-cloud architecture, with workload split between the cloud and owned server/storage assets in a datacenter, VXCs are also a great way to interconnect two approved datacenters, with a private link that avoids the public internet and provides a secure, high-performance connection.

For more information about cloud storage and cloud-based services, contact Astound.