Hybrid Cloud Storage: A Tiered Approach

Hybrid Cloud Storage

For hybrid cloud storage, data mostly resides within the private portion of the cloud. If apps are also deployed within the private cloud, the data store may store files and data for these apps, this should be the highest-performing storage system within your entire hybrid cloud storage strategy.

It’s all about time and money

The costs of local and cloud data persistence is now so inexpensive that using secondary means, even tertiary mean, of storing data as an active backup system for primary persistence, or even as an up-to-date copy of the primary storage, is the best approach. With a few exceptions.

In the hybrid cloud storage strategy, the secondary storage system exists in the public cloud. Data is replicated or moved to a public cloud storage system, my preference is as Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Simple Storage Service, to provide active backup for the primary storage system. In other cases, an enterprise might move older data to the public cloud to free up space in primary storage. AWS Glacier would be a great example.

If a secondary storage system is used to store data moved from primary storage, be sure to design your apps to look for data in both storage systems.

Triple up

Archived storage is optional, but triple redundancy is always a good idea. Again, and especially, with the low cost of storage. So why not? Archived storage systems are low-cost and low-performance systems designed for long-term storage of data that is no longer needed by core business processes, or to back up other backup systems. AWS Glacier, for example, is built for archival storage functions. In my industry, track/trace/serialization of Pharmaceutical products, it is mandated to archive data for six years.

Hybrid Cloud and Tiered Storage

Using a hybrid cloud for a tiered data storage architecture offers several benefits to an enterprise. First, because it establishes two, even three, separate storage systems all at different price and performance levels. Second, tiered storage helps developers and IT create application-specific storage strategies. For example, some data analytics systems interact almost exclusively with the most current data. As a result, an organization could move older data into a cheaper systems.

Additionally, tiered storage in the cloud creates a backup environment that spans two separate platforms — public and private cloud — to provide automatic redundancy that is geographically separate. Finally, tiered storage in hybrid cloud should reduce the risk of data loss, caused by disk failure or human error, to almost zero.

The challenge, however, is to create a tiered storage strategy that accounts for all enterprise use cases and properly serves business processes. For instance, in data analytics, the system might need to support other use cases, such as fraud detection through machine learning.

Enterprises must carefully design and plan for both their tiered storage architecture and automation processes. As with anything, test, test, test to ensure your hybrid tiered storage system lives meets requirements and expectations.

As always – Stay Cloudy

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