Debunking Myths About Switching From Traditional Storage To Storage-as-a-Service

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With the explosive growth in the amount of information companies must handle today, traditional data storage solutions are being stretched beyond the breaking point. Recognizing that adding the hardware and software resources required to keep up with exponential information growth is becoming prohibitively expensive, many IT managers are seriously considering Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) as an alternative.

As the name implies, STaaS users don’t buy storage, but rather leverage storage services. STaaS vendors such as Zadara Storage, provide customers with access to whatever amount of storage they need for a monthly fee that is based on their consumption. Because this approach employs Operating Expense (OpEx) spending rather than up-front Capital Expense (CapEx) expenditures, overall costs are substantially reduced. Other benefits of the STaaS model include elastic scaling and easy provisioning, leading to greatly enhanced flexibility.

Still, some IT leaders remain skeptical that the STaaS model can really work for them. One reason for that skepticism is the assumption that STaaS only applies to the public cloud. That’s not necessarily the case. But a great deal of the resistance to adopting STaaS is based on what are seen as the shortcomings inherent in the cloud computing-paradigm. So, let’s look at some widely believed myths concerning cloud storage.

Myth 1: The Cloud Is Less Secure

The number one question many IT executives have about cloud data storage is whether their information will remain secure. The concern, of course, is that data stored in the cloud could be more vulnerable than if it is kept safely on site and behind the organization’s own firewall. Actually, the opposite may well be true.

According to the Alert Logic 2012 State of Cloud Security Report, on-premises facilities are subjected to intrusion attempts at a rate that is more than twice that experienced by cloud service providers. As far as potential intruders are concerned, the issue is not so much where data is housed, as how well it is protected. And that’s where a first class STaaS vendor actually has an advantage.

Because ensuring the security of the data entrusted to them is a fundamental requirement of their business model, STasS vendors  focus on state-of-the-art data protection processes and technologies to an extent that few of their customers could achieve on their own. For example, many organizations don’t encrypt their locally stored data. But a good STaaS vendor will not only store their customers’ information in encrypted form but can also work with the customer to ensure that a second level of encryption is applied when the data is in transit to and from the storage provider’s facilities.

For all but the largest and most technically sophisticated enterprises, a first class STaaS vendor will actually provide a greater level of protection for a customers’ data than they could achieve on their own.

Myth 2: Because of Multi-Tenancy, a Customer’s Data Could Be Exposed To Other Customers

Cloud storage providers can offer lower prices for their storage because they achieve economies-of-scale by hosting the data of many customers who share a common pool of physical storage resources. Managers considering STaaS sometimes fear that their data could be inadvertently or deliberately accessed by other customers. Another concern is that the unpredictable activities of other tenants could adversely affect storage access performance.

Even in a multi-tenant environment, a good STaaS provider will employ sophisticated technical solutions to ensure that each user’s data is inaccessible to other customers. Some STaaS vendors take it a step further. For example, with Zadara’s VPSA® Storage Arrays, the storage resources are not shared, but are dedicated to each customer. Every customer’s data is protected from being commingled with that of other users, and storage performance cannot be impacted by other customers’ workloads.

Myth 3: The Cloud Makes Data Storage Management More Complex

Some storage administrators whose expertise is based on traditional SAN or NAS storage models are concerned that their lack of intimate understanding of cloud infrastructure will make the storage management job more difficult. This is especially true if they are considering a hybrid solution, in which part of their data is committed to the cloud, and other parts remain on-site in their own data center. Actually, the simplification of storage management is one of the strengths of the STaaS approach.

A good STaaS vendor will provide customers with a simplified but comprehensive browser dashboard through which administrators can monitor and control their entire storage infrastructure. Functions such as determining system status or adding additional capacity can be accomplished quickly and intuitively through the dashboard, with no need to directly interact with physical storage resources.

 

Myth 4: The Cloud Leads To Vendor Lock-In

Another concern many IT managers have concerning cloud storage is being locked into a specific vendor. Once data is committed to a particular cloud services provider, it can be difficult to move it elsewhere if that becomes necessary or desirable. Here again, the choice of STaaS vendor can make a real difference.

Zadara Storage, for example, enables users to extract their storage infrastructure from their compute infrastructure.  This storage independence gives users the ability to connect their storage to any of the cloud service providers – effectively breaking the vendor lock-in.  Additionally, Zadara Storage supports a mulit-cloud approach where they can connect concurrently to multiple cloud service providers and share data between them.  This provides customers with the means to easily migrate their data between various public cloud vendors, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, or between the cloud and the customer’s own on-premises storage. With good planning and the right STaaS provider, being locked into a specific cloud services vendor need not be an issue.

STaaS Takes Enterprise Storage To The Next Level

Companies are switching from traditional storage solutions to STaaS at ever-increasing rates. Research and Markets has projected that the global storage as a service market will grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 29.59% between 2016 and 2020. If you’d like to know more about how STaaS can provide next-level storage solutions for your company, please download the ‘STaaS vs Traditional Storage’ infographic.

Zadara Team

Zadara Team

Since 2011, Zadara’s Edge Cloud Platform (ZCP) simplifies operational complexity through automated, end-to-end provisioning of compute, storage and network resources.

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