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Cloud Storage: 5 Good Deals And 3 Risky Propositions: Page 2 of 3

>> Opportunity No. 2: Archiving noncritical data. According to many estimates, and our own experience, about 80% of data that's stored on production file systems never gets touched again. Yet an increase in e-discovery requests and compliance mandates makes it beneficial to be able to lay your hands on files fast, especially in highly regulated sectors. Most shops simply move from production systems to tape what IT considers outdated or nonessential, but after just a few requests to restore from tape, that course doesn't seem so simple.

The answer? Migrate that data into the cloud as a final resting place while allowing for quick online restores. It's a lot less expensive to rent public cloud storage than to buy and maintain drives, and you get rid of expensive tapes and the hassle of managing a rotation system and sending media off-site.

Unlike with D2D2T, a public storage cloud provisioned by a service provider can work well for enterprises. For example, with Nirvanix's virtual CIFS or NFS share, IT can map users to what appears to be storage on a local file server, but it's a virtual volume in cyberspace.

That brings up the main detracting factor when using a public storage cloud: Internet bandwidth. Employees have grown accustomed to the speed of internal Ethernet networks, so unless you can purchase a dedicated circuit to handle the load, be prepared for complaints. And ensure you run your archive job during off hours.

>> Opportunity No. 3: Cloud-based NAS. The same virtual storage technology that Nirvanix offers for archiving may be adapted for use as a production file system for everyday business needs. For smaller organizations or those with a large number of remote employees, subscribing to cloud-based NAS can not only save big bucks from a capital and management perspective, it might be the best solution for sharing data among a distributed workforce. Small and midsize businesses that have the bandwidth to support reasonable upload and download speeds will find cloud NAS provides affordable disaster recovery, management, and a level of fault tolerance comparable to enterprise-class systems.

Nirvanix boasts that customers can save 75% to 90% for storage services when the hard and soft costs of maintaining a network-attached storage system, including hardware, ongoing maintenance and management, and operating costs, are factored in.

Of course, 90% is probably overly optimistic. At Nirvanix's retail price of $256 per terabyte, you'd pay $2,560 per month for 10 TB of public cloud storage. Name-brand NAS hardware would run 10 times that, and you'll need a storage engineer to manage it. Factor in utilities and 20% annual support maintenance for that hardware, and 75% savings aren't out of the question. You will sacrifice LAN speed, however. IT and business managers must make the decision as to whether the trade-off is worthwhile, based on data access frequency.

chart: How likely is it that you will move these general service categories to a cloud environment?

>> Opportunity No. 4: Bulk digitization of aging records. Compliance requirements are driving organizations of all types to digitize records that have been collecting dust for years. The challenge of storing this massive volume of data is particularly acute in the medical industry, where detailed imaging records sometimes require storage in the petabyte range. The cost of purchasing an array from a top-tier storage vendor with a petabyte of capacity will give sticker shock to even the most well-funded IT organization.

Alternatively, private storage clouds, comprising multiple commodity servers, are now a viable option when scalability and low cost are more important than lightning-fast spindle speeds. Sound like an obvious statement? You'd be surprised at how often name-brand vendors seek to sell their Tier 1 product lines for bulk storage when all you really need is the slower SATA.

>> Opportunity No. 5: Client backups into your own cloud. Third-party cloud-based client backup services, such as AmeriVault, that are aimed at consumers and SMBs can be a lifesaver if your CEO wakes up one day to that ominous clicking sound coming from her laptop's hard drive.

But for large companies, multiply the cost to store even 250 MB of client data by 1,000 employees and you're looking at a pretty hefty monthly tab, even accounting for data deduplication and intelligent bit-level differential technologies. Be prepared for a performance hit, and who wants to manage yet another client on each PC?

By using a private storage cloud, IT can write scripts to accomplish the same tasks that third-party backup clients perform, without the overhead. Nirvanix, for example, provides a 1-TB virtual CIFS/NFS share, which could be used as a client backup repository, for $256 per month with a $200-per-month support fee.