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For many business owners, growing their companies remains a key focus that drives many of their business decisions. One tool that is being adopted more often, especially in recent years, to facilitate this is that of cloud computing. The cloud offers companies more agility, lower operating costs, and more efficient and productive work, but even with those advantages, some businesses may struggle finding a cloud provider thats right for them. In many cases, the question isnt if the business should do it, but rather how well the cloud will fit into the existing organizations processes. When the time comes to make an important decision over who you will choose to handle your cloud storage needs, here are five things you should consider.

One of the major factors holding business owners back from embracing the cloud is the concern over security. When you use a cloud storage provider, youre essentially giving your valuable data to a third party with the expectation theyll keep it safe. Even so, with numerous news stories involving security breaches at big companies, business leaders may not be enthusiastic about giving their data to someone else. Most cloud storage companies have responded to these concerns by improving their own security, adding in new measures aimed at protecting clients data. When you pick a cloud storage provider, make sure they have sufficient security measures. These can include anti-virus software, data encryption, firewalls, and routine security audits.

While it may not be a surprise, bringing down operating costs is a major reason so many companies have started using the cloud. And with so many cloud vendors striving for your business, prices have become very competitive. Examine closely how each providers pricing structure works. Many providers offer a certain amount of storage for free, but businesses that need a lot more storage will need to pay for their services. Some vendors have a monthly subscription fee, while others have an upfront flat fee that usually lasts the whole year until you renew it. Once you know how a vendor charges their clients, figure out which pricing plan works best for your company.

Storing data in the cloud isnt some nebulous, abstract concept. That data is stored in an actual physical location; its just transferred over the internet. When looking for a cloud provider, know where they plan on storing your companys information. If the vendor stores your data in a different country, that countrys laws may affect who has access to it and how it can be controlled. Another factor to be considered is if the data storage location is at risk for natural disasters like tornadoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes. Knowing your cloud vendor has a plan for how to protect and save your data in case an emergency strikes can play a major role in which one you end up choosing.

The service level agreement (SLA) should be a key factor when you decide on a cloud storage provider. The SLA basically outlines what a vendor will do for your company and what the clients responsibility is. This may include items such as what kind of data will be stored, how it will be stored, how it will be protected, how problems are solved, and a variety of other important items critical to understanding how the cloud vendor operates. Make sure you know what a prospective cloud vendors SLA entails to get a good idea what you can expect from them.

No technology is perfect, and problems will arise from time to time. When the unfortunate happens, its helpful to know you can contact your cloud provider to get some much needed assistance. So before choosing a vendor, find out how they handle tech support. Ask them when theyll be available (preferably 24/7 and on holidays) and how best to contact them (online or over the phone). You should also find out how quickly they respond to a concern or problem, since having your cloud storage go down for a few days could be disastrous for your business. A vendor that does not meet these needs may be one thats best avoided.

Choosing a cloud provider for your storage needs is a very important decision. There are lots of considerations to take into account, and your choice is not one to take lightly. If you go in prepared, with all the needed information at your disposal, youll be sure you can make an intelligent and informed decision. From there, youll be able to take full advantage of all the benefits cloud storage has to offer.

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5 Things to Consider When Choosing the Right Cloud Storage

Recently I decided to take stock of the various websites for which I have an access account, consisting of either a username and password or, more commonly, an email address and password.

This was driven in part by my setting out to test 1Password, a password manager service based in Canada, but also by a need to address the bad habit of reusing some passwords across multiple sites.

For more than a decade Ive been using a British product, My1Login, as my password manager. I will hold off on a comparison of the two password services for now and focus instead on another aspect that surfaced as I began testing 1Password.

As I set out to test 1Password, I found that I had 232 separate accounts stored in my long-time management program. These covered a wide range of areas, from home services (banking, utilities, etc.), education sites (primarily for physics and computer science), and on to hobby sites (amateur radio, space, weather, etc.).

With the very first site I tested, I came to realize that, as happens with bricks and mortar businesses, some of these web services have shut down, likely after declaring bankruptcy. What I wasnt prepared for was the sheer number of sites in my password manager that now no longer existed.

Fifty sites! And Im not quite through examining all 232 of my sites. Thats 50 sites that have vanished, taking with them my username/email address and a password, perhaps for some even a birthdate. In some cases of cloud storage services, theyve also taken data I was storing with them. None of this lost data was of particular importance, as I was only testing those storage sites.

Here then is a small selection of the now 50+ sites for which I had accounts at one time and that have now moved into oblivion, or in a small number of cases, have completely rebranded:

You get the idea. There is no shortage of once-vibrant internet properties that no longer exist. Who knows what becomes of the customer databases when these companies shut down or are pressed into bankruptcy! Are the databases wiped? Are they resold? Do creditors seize them and resell them, perhaps even on the so-called dark web?

Among the couple of hundred sites then, for which I have or had accounts, only in a handful of instances have I ever encountered an option to delete an account. Ive written a few sites on occasion asking for an account deletion option, only to be told that there isnt one.

Given how prevalent password reuse is, it is easy to understand why there is value in the databases of extinct companies. Do yourself a favour. Every now and then check out the internet accounts you have. See if you can shut down accounts you no longer use. If there is no option to delete an account, which almost surely is the case, send a note to the company requesting deletion. And use a unique password for each site or service!

Follow me on Facebook (facebook.com/PeterVogelCA), or on Twitter (@PeterVogel).

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Internet sites come and go, but what about your login information? - The B.C. Catholic

Consciously or subconsciously we all tier the objects that are dear to us. I have the objects I value the most in the drawer next to my bed, notably the engraved pen set that my mother gave me on the day I started my first job many decades ago. Then there are all the other drawers and cupboards in the house that contain objects of importance but have less value today. These are, of course, much more difficult to locate and retrieve. Please don't make me go into the loft, or the garage. These contain what can only be described as the permafrost of stored objects. They are difficult or impossible to access and take the longest time to retrieve.

Okay, so we've established that I need a life laundry - in other words a declutter - and it's the same for your data. All those decades ago, when I started my working life as an analyst programmer, my company ingested environmental data from sensors all over the globe on a continual basis. At the time that the raw data was ingested it was of extremely high importance and value. It formed the starting point for numerical modeling. By the next day, the value of that raw data had diminished. In an environment where the value and importance of data is continually changing, the ability to automatically manage the location and access to data as its "temperature" changes from hot to cool to cold to frozen was highly desirable.

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And so I was tasked with implementing a hierarchical storage management (HSM) system. Back then, HSM followed a set of business policies that governed which data was managed, the aging criteria, and the storage targets. At that time the challenges that governed the aggressiveness of the HSM policy were determined by how much tier 1 storage we could afford, along with our data ingestion capacities. Those numbers gave us a number for the free capacity we needed to run the models. Back then, tier 1 storage capacities were measured in MB, not GB - and certainly not in TB! Tier 2 storage was tape!

The policies that governed the timing of migration of data between tiers and the HSM software ensured that the data remained referentially accessible to the application, regardless of where the data resided in the hierarchy.

Fast forward a couple of decades. By now I was working for the company that defined the term information lifecycle management (ILM), and I became the ILM business manager. The focus for ILM was to help customers solve pressing business issues, such as the flood of data and information and its changing value over time. From my aging notes, here are a couple of the mantras from the time (2003).

"There is no good reason to store less valuable, aging information on the same storage device as more valuable, new information."

The one that always sticks:

"The right data, on the right device, at the right time in its lifecycle, at the right price, at the right service level."

Fast forward to the present, and I hope you're seeing the thread. Today we call this tiering, although I'm continually confused by references to data tiering, storage tiering, cloud tiering! Let's keep it simple and call it data tiering, because it's your data and your operation. Organizations today ingest, create, and generate vastly more data than they ever did in the past, and there is now a wide choice of storage targets for tiered data. Targets include the plethora of storage offerings from cloud service providers (CSPs), but the fundamental premise remains the same. So let me modify one word and modernize the second mantra from 2003.

"The right data, on the right cloud, at the right time in its lifecycle, at the right price, at the right service level."

The requirement for data tiering is as strong today, if not stronger, than it has ever been. Many organizations are forming their strategies for intelligent data management. They aim to protect their investment in tier 1 performance storage, such as AFF or FAS, from the impact of capacity shortages and loss of performance by managing the residency of inactive, cold data. This active management maintains service delivery and customer satisfaction.

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FabricPool is the data tiering function in NetApp ONTAP that gives you access to tiering policies targets and automation. Depending on your corporate governance, compliance, and regulation requirements, you may be required to tier some data to the private cloud only. NetApp StorageGRID object storage is a good choice for a robust, cost-efficient target for locally tiered data. You might also have data that is free to be tiered to the public cloud. In that case, you can choose a CSP and tier your data to a range of CSP storage tiers, depending on your requirements. Here are some example cloud tier targets:

Amazon S3 (Standard, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, Intelligent-Tiering)

Amazon Commercial Cloud Services (C2S)

Google Cloud Storage (Multi-Regional, Regional, Nearline, Coldline, Archive)

IBM Cloud Object Storage (Standard, Vault, Cold Vault, Flex)

Microsoft Azure Blob Storage (Hot and Cool)

NetApp data tiering also delivers additional cost benefits for customers who are challenged by the growth of secondary data protection storage. In this scenario, FabricPool can be deployed to tier secondary cold NetApp SnapMirror or SnapVault backups to lower-cost storage, such as local tier StorageGRID or the public cloud.

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In either case, the benefits of deduplication, compression, compaction, and encryption are realized, reducing the required secondary storage capacity and transport costs while maintaining the efficiencies and security of your data assets throughout their lifecycle.

A good example of data tiering using NetApp technology is the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), in Boulder, Colorado. Astronomy produces the largest, most complex, and most diverse datasets in the world. Managing this volume of data required FabricPool and StorageGRID to auto-tier huge amounts of data and return a 50% saving in costs. Read the full case study: LASP Data Tiering.

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As you can see, data tiering has a long history that goes back many decades.

For me, the following things differentiate the NetApp data tiering offering from the competition:

You have a choice of local or remote secondary storage targets.

Delaying tier 1 storage upgrades delivers a tangible cost benefit.

Policy-based, intelligent, zero-touch automation frees IT staff to focus on service delivery.

Removes the risk of "out-of-space" conditions that affect customer-facing applications.

Data efficiencies are maintained throughout the tiering process, reducing costs.

If you would like to find out more about NetApp data tiering technologies, here are my recommendations for further reading:

Intelligent data growth management

ONTAP FabricPool Use Case

Inactive Data Tiering to Amazon AWS S3 with FabricPool on FlexPod

Disclaimer

NetApp Inc. published this content on 13 September 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 14 September 2021 11:11:01 UTC.

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NetApp : The right data, on the right cloud, at the right time - Marketscreener.com