Top Ways to Maximize Your Cloud Storage
The path to maximized cloud storage.
Leveraging a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud environment is gaining traction and becoming the ‘go-to’ storage strategy for most organizations. Eric Polet, senior product marketing manager at Spectra Logic, offers actionable strategies to maximize cloud storage as you adapt to the latest cloud trends.
The cloud storage market is expected to grow in the coming years, with a predicted $376 billion by 2029. This amount of growth in the adoption of cloud storage is due to two major factors: first, digital data is being created at an astonishing rate. In fact, IDC expects the “Global Datasphere to more than double in size from 2022 to 2026, putting even more pressure on organizations to manage and protect their data while creating opportunities to activate data for business and societal benefits. Second, the concept of a cloud-first strategy for organizations is becoming mainstream. This trend is driving the need for organizations to manage data at scale in single-cloud or multi-cloud architectures, raising new complex challenges as to the best ways to manage, use and preserve data being stored in the cloud.
Today organizations are developing their long-term cloud storage strategies with a focus on integrating multi and hybrid cloud workflows, enabling storage and applications to work together, and ensuring that data is stored in ransomware-resilient and protected locations. With budgets tight and resources trimmed, organizations facing these challenges are also tasked with selecting data management and storage solutions that are cost-effective, easy to use, and efficient in order to accelerate productivity and innovation in hybrid cloud and multi-cloud ecosystems.
Security and Resiliency of Storage
Every day there are new reports of organizations being hit by ransomware attacks or having their data stolen and /or corrupted by outside threats. Creating a storage plan that will help to reduce the risk of attack, but more importantly, provide the resiliency to recover from such an attack, is paramount in every organization. This is why finding ways to securely protect data (regardless of where data is stored or located) is one of the most important things to consider when evaluating a storage strategy. This is often where a hybrid or multi-cloud approach is utilized.
Because the goal of most ransomware attacks is to make data useless until the ransom is paid, it is essential to store multiple copies of data in different locations, in different clouds, or in a combination of clouds and on-premises storage, to ensure that the data is not easily destroyed or rendered useless from encryption. Having data stored in multiple locations that are separate from one another can prevent all data from being encrypted or destroyed in a single attack, allowing the organization to regain operational control utilizing data from another location. Implementing this type of strategy will help to create a ransomware-resilient architecture where data can be accessed and utilized in the event of an attack.
Reducing Multi-cloud and Multi-location Challenges
Increased data mobility between environments adds complexity and challenges such as data vulnerability and access. The public cloud enables data to be accessed remotely but can come with additional security concerns and potentially large egress fees when data is accessed or moved to other locations. Finding solutions that simplify data orchestration and global visibility has become more challenging as the use of multiple tiers and multiple clouds becomes more commonplace. In fact, multi-cloud environments have proven to be financially challenging for some industries that need to store data at scale.
A multi-cloud and multi-location architecture delivers flexibility in data utilization across on-premises and multiple clouds, where workloads, applications and other resources can be utilized across the many locations to generate the greatest advantage at the most affordable point. From a user’s perspective, it should not matter where the data is stored if the management platform is implemented correctly and effectively — whether the data is stored in the public cloud, in multiple clouds, or on-premises. Ideally, all files should appear in their native format and be ready to use.
Modern data storage protocols, such as object storage, deliver the needed capabilities to allow for new multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud data management tools that enable universal data availability. When organizations store data in multiple locations (including on-premises), they are better equipped to take advantage of new clouds, applications and technologies as they become available. This allows organizations to make the switch from one cloud vendor to another without paying large fees and encountering IT challenges. A new way of creating flexibility and cloud freedom can be achieved with a modern hybrid multi-cloud data management software that combines cloud and on-premises storage into a single namespace so organizations can unify their data, optimize their shifting workloads, and use the clouds and applications that best suit their needs.
See More: Why Object Storage Is Key in the Cloud Operating Model
Important Cloud Data Management Capabilities
The key to choosing a hybrid cloud data management software is to find one that integrates the public cloud into an organization’s workflows while simultaneously maintaining on-premises workloads. It’s also critical for a solution to enable multi-cloud workflows to help avert large egress fees and vendor lock-in. Making sure that the solution offers flexible policy-driven storage management that allows organizations to meet service level agreements (SLAs) and control costs while ensuring that data is stored where it is accessible and affordable is also imperative. Overall, an effective data management strategy provides the ability to seamlessly share and store data to meet business objectives, no matter where the data is created or stored, whether in one cloud or multiple clouds, on-premises or even in edge locations.
Realizing a Multi-Cloud Architecture
Data management and storage management software technology has evolved significantly in recent years in both functionality and value, benefitting organizations — especially those that are implementing and using multi-cloud architectures. From the ability to incorporate multiple physical locations as well as use multiple cloud providers and tiers, these game-changing technology advancements are enabling modern organizations to access, share and leverage data between environments to make data-driven decisions and boost discovery and innovation.
Organizations today are building and designing their overall infrastructures and workflows to take advantage of policy-based solutions that manage and orchestrate data across any combination of on-premises and cloud storage. Modern data management and storage management tools that make data available and accessible, regardless of the number of locations or the number of cloud storage locations, are empowering organizations to effectively balance the cost, usage, storage and accessibility of data, shifting the focus from the ‘storage’ of data to the value of data.
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MORE ON CLOUD STORAGE:
- Multi-Cloud Storage Management Mistakes
- Cloud-Native Persistent Storage: 4 Key Deployment Considerations
- A Cloud-Focused Approach for Hollywood to Overcome Data Storage Woes
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