Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Cloud Storage: 5 Good Deals And 3 Risky Propositions: Page 3 of 3

Not So Fast ...
While public and private cloud storage can fill some enterprise needs, serious technical drawbacks will drastically limit use in at least three key areas.

>> Rule No. 1: The cloud is no place for highly transactional systems or latency-sensitive data. If you want to break a perfectly functional data-driven application, put the back end in a storage cloud. Typically, multitiered applications enjoy anywhere from 100-Mb to multiple bonded Gigabit Ethernet connections between them for optimal performance.

The prohibitive cost of large amounts of Internet bandwidth is by far the top roadblock to the widespread use of cloud storage for mission-critical apps. You won't find vendors pushing cloud storage for highly transactional back ends, either, unless the entire system is hosted by a service provider.

Similarly, don't put a 10-MB Excel spreadsheet that's shared among several employees into a public storage cloud. Use private clouds for latency-sensitive data that requires LAN speeds.

>> Rule No. 2: Don't move critical data into the cloud until you have a backup plan. Most large public cloud storage providers offer 99.9% uptime service-level agreements; that equates to downtime of a few hours per year. Still, despite that assurance, you don't want to be left without access to critical corporate data in the event of an outage. Amazon S3 was down for almost an entire day in July, leaving a large number of customers twiddling their thumbs.

Time is money, so if you plan to use a public storage cloud as your primary file repository, be sure to replicate data to a location where access can be restored fast. For smaller shops, that fallback might be a $500 external 1-TB drive. For larger organizations, replication might involve a private storage cloud, an inexpensive file server with direct-attached storage, or a second cloud storage vendor.

>> Rule No. 3: Don't use a consumer-grade cloud provider for enterprise needs. Consumer services like Hewlett-Packard's Upline are increasingly being marketed to small enterprises. However, these offerings are still relegated to very simple backup and file sharing--forget about using Upline as a backup target for an enterprise application. Additionally, there's no mention about guaranteed uptime service levels.

If a service will fundamentally change for the worse the way your users access their data--say, by forcing them to use a browser or Web app--steer clear.

Where Does Cloud Storage Fit?
  Drive Technology Suggested Uses
Tier 1 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel Critical systems, highly transactional databases. Not suitable for cloud storage.
Tier 2 10,000-rpm Fibre Channel; 10,000-rpm SATA; direct-attached SCSI Less I/O-intensive applications, archiving, general NAS needs. Best suited to private storage cloud.
Tier 3 7,000-rpm SATA; IDE RAID Infrequently accessed archive data, simple file sharing, client backups. Ideal for public or private storage cloud.
This article, the second in a four-part series, is just one element of a special multimedia package on business innovation. For links to relatedstories and additional editorial content, go to businessinnovation.cmp.com.

Continue to the sidebar:
Upstart Cloud Providers Challenge Status Quo