what exactly is CLOUD STORAGE

[ricksimpson]

I wanted to know about cloud storage....What kind of data and workload is cloud storage suited for...What factors should you consider before implementing :confused:cloud storage?

[alemcherry]

Cloud storage offers scalability in terms of bandwidth and space. You will not be limited with the typical deidicated server limits and will be able to handle sudden increase in space or traffic.

[Centennialbrown]

Cloud servers offer many advantages over a shared or a normal VPS. This is due to the number of servers that are being used for a single cluster. The architecture of cloud servers utilize groups of high specification servers, network attached storage devices to reliably serve every web page, and image of a website. So a cloud offers you with 100% uptime. Another feature that a cloud hosting offers is of scalability.

[SiberForum]

Well, Cloud Storage has three characteristics:

At the beginning of the storage service must be on a network.
Next storage pool must allow for easy scalability without downtime.
And finally, the storage pools are easy to manage especially when scaled.

[Loan2day]

Cloud Storage seems like a very broad topic and a rather vague term. It refers to distributed computing or storage on a large network, and has an infinite scalability and solution purposes. A dedicated market has only begun for Cloud Services and is dominated now by Nirvanix, Amazon and few others as it arises. Are you planning on using a Ciprico NAS or DAS product for integration with a Cloud Storage solution?

[wholesalebackup]

Cloud storage is basically virtual storage that you can provision very quickly.

Different cloud storage options have different capabilities. Some have unique APIs which require programming skill, but one can write data to them and read data from them using the APIs. Some offer great redundancy as the data in the storage is replicated multiple times across several geographic locations and devices. An example of the above two combined is amazon's S3.

Other data may act like a hard drive, and may allow for attachment to a virtual (or cloud) server. The data may get destroyed when the server is turned off, or may be left on while the server is on. For example, Amazon offers EBS (Elastic Block storage) which one can attach to an Amazon virtual server.

In all cases, the storage can be setup and deployed usually within minutes, and in some cases instantaneously, and usually via a programming API, so you can increase and decrease storage depending on factors like how loaded the system is at that moment.

[otech]

Large amounts of data and entire servers (including data, applications, OS and patches) can be quickly replicated. The advantage of cloud storage is in the event of a disaster - your recovery time is usually under 4 hours and almost 4 hours faster than traditional disaster recovery backup records, which can take days/weeks with tape backup.

[Jay Fernando]

In cloud storage, data are stored on multiple third-party servers, instead on the dedicated servers used in traditional networked data storage. In reality, the user’s data could be stored on any one or more computers used to create the cloud. But even though the location is virtual, user sees a “static” location for his data and can actually manage storage space as if it were connected to his own computer.


Jay Fernando
Technical Support Team
GMO CLOUD AMERICA INC.
Email: supportus@gmocloud.com (24hrs, 365 days)
https://support.gmocloud.us/