Object Storage Solutions: 5 Reasons to Adopt a Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategy
If you’ve weighed the cost-reduction benefits of network storage vs. cloud storage, you’ve probably discovered that the right solution for your data center is a mix of on-premises and public cloud services. The truth is, more often than not, hybrid cloud strategy between the two provides the greatest platform flexibility and economics.
And while IT professionals in organizations of all sizes have validated this approach through testing, surprisingly, it’s the enterprise which has been the greatest to adopt the benefits of hybrid cloud strategy. According to Flexera’s State of the Cloud 2020 report, 93% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy while 87 percent have a hybrid cloud strategy.
Could your IT organization benefit from the cost-effective flexibility of on-premises object storage with S3 or Azure public clouds, based on workloads and data mobility needs? Review the Top 5 Reasons to Adopt a Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategy for Your Data Center to see if it makes sense at your organization.
♾️ Limitless Scalability
Hybrid Cloud Delivers Unprecedented Operational Efficiency.
Managing one large, scalable pool of storage is far more efficient than managing two smaller ones. Hybrid storage is hands down the most scalable storage model ever devised. It combines on-prem object storage — which is itself scalable to hundreds of PBs — with cloud storage that is limitlessly scalable. This single-pool storage model reduces data silos and simplifies management with a single namespace. Hybrid allows you to keep a copy of all metadata on-premises, ensuring rapid search across both cloud and on-premises data.
☁️ AWS S3-compatible
We now have a widely accepted standard interface.
The world of storage revolves around interface standards: the glue that ensures interoperability and drives down cost. So, the emergence of a common interface for on-prem and cloud storage is a game-changer. For hybrid storage, the defacto standard is Amazon’s S3 API, an interface that began in cloud storage and is now available for on-premises object storage.
The emergence of a common interface for on-prem and cloud storage is a game-changer. By deploying a hybrid cloud strategy, storage managers have newfound flexibility to deploy common tools and applications on-prem and in the cloud, while easily moving data between the two environments.
💪 More Deployment Options to Match Your Needs
Get the Operational Flexibility to Address Each Storage Need.
A hybrid cloud approach helps by offering more deployment options than other storage models. Whether the objective is rapid data access on-premises or long-term archival storage, individual department needs can be met with a common set of storage tools and techniques.
For the on-premises component, you can select from options that range from zero up-front cost software running on the servers you already own, to multi-petabyte turnkey systems. For the cloud component, a range of offerings meet both long-term and short-term storage needs. Across both worlds, a common object storage interface lets you mix-and-match the optimal solution.
🛡️ Data Protection
Best-of-breed data protection is now available to everyone.
Data protection is fundamental to storage. A hybrid storage model offers businesses of all sizes incredible data protection options, delivering data durability that previously would have been affordable to only the most well-heeled storage users. In a hybrid configuration, you can back up data to object storage on premises, then automatically tier data to the cloud for long-term archive (Amazon Glacier, Google Coldline, Azure Blob).
This gives you two optimal results: You have a copy of data on-site for rapid recovery when needed, and a low-cost, long-term archive offsite copy for disaster recovery. Many popular backup solutions including Veritas, Veeam, Commvault, and Rubrik provide Amazon S3 connectors that enable this solution as a simple drop-in.
📋 Data Compliance
External and internal data governance plays a big role in data storage planning.
In a recent survey, 59% of respondents reported the need to maintain some of their data on premises. On average, that group stated that only about half of their data can go to the cloud. Financial data and customer records, in particular, are often subject to security, governance and compliance rules, driven by both internal policy and external regulation.
Whether you need to some maintain financial data or customer records on-premises (versus the cloud), object storage helps organizations meet data governance rules by both internal policy and external regulation. With a hybrid cloud model, you can more easily accommodate the changes needed set policies to ensure compliance, tailoring migration and data protection rules to specific data types.
Choosing the Right Object Storage Solution
If learning more about how object storage technologies can reduce cost by up to 70% when compared with traditional SAN/NAS solutions or AWS public clouds, schedule a time to speak or give us a call at (888) 828-7646. We’ve helped businesses of all sizes deploy S3-compatible object storage solutions to simply their storage infrastructure.
