Koshur Samachar

Cloud storage is a cloud computing model and stores information or data on the Internet through providers who manages and operates information or data storage as a service. It’s followed through on request just in time costs and capacity, and disposes of purchasing and dealing with your own information or data storage framework. This gives us easily, worldwide access and durability, with anywhere, anyplace and anytime data access.
Cloud storage is purchased from a third party cloud vendor who owns and operates data storage capacity and delivers it over the Internet in a pay-as-you-go model. These cloud storage vendors manage capacity, security and durability to make data accessible to your applications all around the world. Applications access cloud storage through traditional storage protocols or directly via an API. Many vendors offer complementary services designed to help collect, manage, secure and analyze data at massive scale.

Benefits of Cloud Storage

1. With cloud storage, there is no hardware to purchase, storage to provision, or capital being used for ‘someday; scenarios. You can add or remove capacity on demand, quickly change performance and retention characteristics, and only pay for storage that you actually use. Less frequently accessed data can even be automatically moved to lower cost tiers in accordance with auditable rules, driving economies of scale.
2. When development teams are ready to execute, infrastructure should never slow them down. Cloud storage allows IT to quickly deliver the exact amount of storage needed, right when it is needed. This allows IT to focus on solving complex application problems instead of having to manage storage systems.
3. Centralizing storage in the cloud creates a tremendous leverage point for new use cases. By using cloud storage lifecycle management policies, you can perform powerful information management tasks including automated tiering or locking down data in support of compliance requirements.

Requirements for Cloud Storage
There are several fundamental requirements when considering storing data in the cloud.

1. Data should be redundantly stored, ideally across multiple facilities and multiple devices in each facility. Natural disasters, human error or mechanical faults should not result in data loss.
2. All data should be available when needed, but there is a difference between production data and archives. The ideal cloud storage will deliver the right balance of retrieval times and cost.
3. All data is ideally encrypted, both at rest and in transit. Permissions and access controls should work just as well in the cloud as they do for on premises storage.

There are three types of cloud data storage: file storage, object storage, and block storage. Each offers its own advantages:

1. File Storage: Some applications need to access shared files and require a file system. This type of storage is often supported with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) server. File storage solutions like EFS (Elastic File System) are ideal for use cases like large content repositories, media stores, development environments, or user home directories.

1. Object Storage: Applications developed in the cloud often take advantage of object storage’s vast scalability and metadata characteristics. Object storage solutions like S3 (Simple Storage Service) are ideal for building modern applications from scratch that require flexibility and scale, and can also be used to import existing data stores for backup, analytics, or archive.
2. Block Storage: Other enterprise applications like databases or ERP systems often require dedicated, low latency storage for each host. This is analagous to DAS (direct-attached storage) or a SAN (Storage Area Network). Block-based cloud storage solutions like EBS (Elastic Block Store) are provisioned with each virtual server and offer the ultra low latency required for high performance workloads.

Advantages of cloud storage

1. Off-site management: Cloud service provider assumes responsibility for protecting and maintaining the stored data. This frees the staff from tasks associated with storage, such as installation, procurement, maintenance, and administration. As such, the staff can focus on other priorities.
2. Quick implementation: Using a cloud service speed up the process of setting up and adding to your storage capabilities. With cloud storage, we can provision the service and start using it within hours or days, depending on how much capacity is involved.
3. Cost-effective: As mentioned, we have pay for the capacity we use. This allows the organization to treat cloud storage costs as an ongoing operating expense instead of a capital expense with the associated upfront investments and tax implications.
4. Scalability: Growth constraints are one of the most severe limitations of on-premise storage. With cloud storage, we can scale up as much as we need. Capacity is virtually unlimited.
5. Business continuity: Storing data offsite supports business continuity in the event that a natural disaster or attacks cuts access to the premises.

Disadvantages of cloud storage

1. Security: Security concerns are common with cloud-based services. Cloud storage providers try to secure their infrastructure with up-to-date technologies and practices, but occasional breaches have occurred, creating discomfort with users.
2. Administrative control: Being able to view your data, access it, and move it at will is another common concern with cloud resources. Offloading maintenance and management to a third party offers advantages but also can limit your control over your data.
3. Latency: Delays in data transmission to and from the cloud can occur as a result of traffic congestion, especially when you use shared public internet connections. However, companies can minimize latency by increasing connection bandwidth.
4. Regulatory compliance: Certain industries or organisations, such as healthcare and finance, have to comply with strict data privacy and archival regulations, which may prevent companies from using cloud storage for certain types of files, such as medical and investment records.