traditional on-premise storage model
Organizations are increasingly phasing out the traditional on-premise storage model in favour of cloud-based storage solutions which have redefined the way data is stored and handled. Cloud storage offers innumerable advantages over on-premise storage, including data security, enhanced encryption and different storage models. When selecting a Cloud storage provider, one of the quintessential factors to consider is storage capacity and accessibility of your files. The most prominent cloud providers such as AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and IBM provide a vast array of storage products with different capacities, pricing, and configurations to suit a wide spectrum. Let’s dive deeper and look at some of the similarities and differences that exist among the four giants.
The four Cloud providers offer object-based storage, that is, data is treated as distinct units, also known as objects, unlike the conventional storage architectures where files are stored and managed in a hierarchical order. Data can easily be stored in virtual machines or virtual servers which provide storage services in a more convenient and secure manner. AWS, which accounts for over 50% of the market share is popularly known for its EC2 instances which are virtual machines that are easily scalable when you need to increase Google Cloud has its GCP instances. Similarly, you can deploy virtual machines on both Microsoft Azure and IBM.
Differences emerge when it comes to various storage models and functionality. Coming in the first place is AWS which offers Elastic Block Storage which is the underlying storage architecture for its EC2 instances. One of the key advantages of EBS storage is the ability to resize the volume without having to reboot the virtual EC2 instances. In EC2 instances data can be stored in tables using relational database systems such as MySQL and PostgreSQL or in NoSQL systems such as Redis or MongoDB where data is stored in key-value AWS also provides file storage using the S3 storage service which stands for Simple Storage Service. The S3 service provides you with a graphical interface that allows you to upload your files and set access restrictions. In S3, files are stored in folders popularly known as buckets. Your data is stored across multiple servers, ensuring redundancy and high availability. For an extra layer of security, S3 provides file encryption in SSL / TLS that converts your files into a non-readable format so that in the event of a breach, the files will be of no Additionally, S3 provides you with different tiers of storage classes that are tailored according to the frequency of data retrieval. There is S3-1A for infrequently accessed data, S3 One zone- 1A, which is a cheaper option for infrequently accessed data, S3 intelligent-tiering and S3 Glacier, which is a low-cost storage class for data archiving. It’s considered a replacement for the old-fashioned on-premise tapes.
Finally, we have Storage gateway, which is a service that connects on-premise software with Amazon Cloud storage. Storage gateway provides a secure and seamless option to integrate your organization’s on-premise IT infrastructure with AWS’s cloud environment. Further, It’s a cost-effective and convenient way of backing up your organization’s data to the cloud.