Cloud storage architecture

Cloud storage architecture

Cloud storage has the same characteristics as cloud computing in terms of agility, scalability, elasticity and multi-tenancy. It is believed to have been invented by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider in the 1960s. Since the sixties, cloud computing has developed along a number of lines, with Web 2.0 being the most recent evolution. However, since the internet only started to offer significant bandwidth in the nineties, cloud computing for the masses has been something of a late developer.

One of the first milestones for cloud computing was the arrival of Salesforce.com in 1999, which pioneered the concept of delivering enterprise applications via a simple website. The services firm paved the way for both specialist and mainstream software firms to deliver applications over the internet. FilesAnywhere also helped pioneer cloud based storage services that also enable users to securely share files online. Both of these companies continue to offer those services today.

It is difficult to pin down a canonical definition of cloud storage architecture, but object storage is reasonably analogous. Cloud storage services like Amazon S3, cloud storage products like EMC Atmos, and distributed storage research projects like OceanStore[2] are all examples of object storage and infer the following guidelines.

Cloud storage is:

made up of many distributed resources, but still acts as one
highly fault tolerant through redundancy and distribution of data
highly durable through the creation of version-ed copies
typically eventually consistent with regard to data replicas

Cloud storage advantages

Companies need only pay for the storage they actually use as it is also possible for companies by utilizing actual virtual storage features like thin provisioning.

Companies do not need to install physical storage devices in their own datacenter or offices, but the fact that storage has to be placed anywhere stays the same (maybe localization costs are lower in offshore locations).

Storage maintenance tasks, such as backup, data replication, and purchasing additional storage devices are offloaded to the responsibility of a service provider, allowing organizations to focus on their core business, but the fact stays the same that someone has to pay for the administrative effort for these tasks 

Cloud storage provides users with immediate access to a broad range of resources and applications hosted in the infrastructure of another organization via a web service interface.