Storage

In the age of the digital economy, organizations accumulate colossal volumes of data – sometimes petabytes a month – which must be stored easily, accessibly, and securely. Similar to other IT fields, storage on local systems purchased, installed, and maintained by an organization often turns out to be inefficient and not cost-effective. Cloud suppliers offer a range of attractive storage solutions that have proved their worth in recent decades across a slew of operational and economic indices, leading organizations to transfer their storage to remote servers.

Storage services offered on public clouds using virtual storage servers free an organization from all the issues involved in purchasing and operating its own storage, including servers, security, processing power, availability, and server traffic. The organization’s data is entirely collected in logical databases on servers that are distributed geographically according to the client’s preference. They offer flexibility of use: increasing or decreasing storage volumes in accordance with changing needs and offering easy access through user-friendly interfaces. These services, which are billed according to actual use, have dramatically reduced storage costs per gigabyte of data in recent years.

Cloud storage services can be implemented in three different formats: on a public cloud, a private cloud, and a hybrid cloud. Public clouds offer storage services from Google, Microsoft, AWS, and dozens of suppliers who specialize in end-to-end storage needs. The cloud storage model can also be implemented using private clouds. In this variation, the organization commits to stricter standards for the storage of sensitive data. Finally, organizations can opt for a hybrid storage format including local storage and storage on a public or private cloud of some data. For example, organizations can store data on current operations at a local data center or in their private cloud, and, in peak business seasons, purchase storage on the public cloud on an ad hoc basis.

Cloud storage systems support a number of data storage formats. First, storage in files, with a hierarchical structure for files and folders. The data are stored in various files, each of which includes several topic- or field-specific folders. This structure is familiar to users from their personal devices and allows for the quick and easy recovery of data. Second, storage in blocks. This method distributes all data into small blocks, each with a unique identifier associated with one of the storage facilities. Block storage is considered quick and efficient, with low lag – features prized in databases and organizations handling high levels of performance. Third, object storage saves data in the form of objects and includes three components: data stored in a file, metadata associated with the file data, and a unique ID number. To recover the data, users must enter their ID number and all the collected data, including their metadata, validations, and protections.

Abnet Communication has accumulated a wealth of experience in and knowledge of the best cloud suppliers’ storage solutions. We stand ready to offer them to any organization or distributor seeking to build an efficient  tailor-made solution for their needs.