Cloud storage services can be accessed through shared computer cloud services, web application service programming interfaces (APIs) or by applications that use APIs, such as desktop cloud storage, cloud storage gateways or Web-based content management systems.
In 1983, CompuServe offered its consumer users a small amount of disk space that could be used to store whatever files they chose to upload.
In 1994, AT & amp; T launches PersonaLink Services, an online platform for personal and business communications as well as entrepreneurship. Storage is one of the first for all web-based, and referenced in their ads as, "You can think of our electronic meeting place as a cloud." Amazon Web Services introduced the AWS S3 cloud storage service in 2006, and has gained wide recognition and adoption as a storage supplier for popular services such as Smugmug, Dropbox, Synaptop, and Pinterest. In 2005, Box announced the sharing of online files and personal cloud content management services for businesses.
Video Cloud storage
Architecture
Cloud storage is based on a highly virtualized infrastructure and such as broader cloud computing in terms of accessible interfaces, near-instant elasticity, multi-tenancy, and scalable resources. Cloud storage services can be used from offsite services (Amazon S3) or deployed on-site (Vion Capacity Services).
Cloud storage typically refers to a hosted object storage service, but the term has been extended to include other types of data storage that are now available as services, such as block storage.
Storage services such as Amazon S3, Oracle Cloud Storage and Microsoft Azure Storage, object storage software such as Openstack Swift, object storage systems such as EMC Atmos, EMC ECS and Hitachi Content Platform, and distributed storage research projects such as OceanStore and VISION Cloud are examples of storage that can be hosted and deployed with cloud storage characteristics.
Cloud storage is:
- Made from many distributed resources, but still serves as one, either in a combined or combined merge cloud architecture
- Highly tolerant of errors through redundancy and data distribution
- Extremely long lasting via creating a versioned copy
- Usually end up consistent with replica data
Maps Cloud storage
Advantages
- Companies only need to pay for the actual storage they use, usually the average monthly consumption. This does not mean that cloud storage is cheaper, it's just the operational cost rather than the cost of capital.
- Businesses that use cloud storage can save energy consumption by up to 70% making it a greener business. Also at the vendor level they are dealing with higher energy levels so they will be better equipped by managing them in order to keep their own costs down as well.
- Organizations can choose between off-site and in-place cloud storage options, or a mix of two options, depending on the relevant decision criteria that complement the potential early direct cost savings; for example, operating sustainability (COOP), disaster recovery (DR), security (PII, HIPAA, SARBOX, IA/CND), and recording storage laws, regulations and policies.
- The availability of data storage and protection is intrinsic to the object's storage architecture, so depending on its application, technology, effort and additional costs to increase availability and protection can be eliminated.
- Storage maintenance tasks, such as the purchase of additional storage capacity, are reduced to the responsibility of the service provider.
- Cloud storage gives users direct access to resources and applications hosted on other organization's infrastructure via the web services interface.
- Cloud storage can be used to copy virtual machine images from the cloud to locations in a location or to import virtual machine images from an on-site location to a cloud image library. In addition, cloud storage can be used to move virtual machine images between user accounts or between data centers.
- Cloud storage can be used as disaster-resistant backup, as there are usually 2 or 3 different backup servers located in different places around the world.
- Cloud storage can be mapped as a local drive with the WebDAV protocol. It can serve as a central file server for organizations with multiple office locations.
Potential worries
Attacking surface area
Outsourced data storage increases the attack surface area.
- When data has been distributed stored in more locations increases the risk of unauthorized physical access to data. For example, in cloud-based architectures, data is replicated and often moved so that the risk of unauthorized data recovery increases dramatically. As in the case of old equipment disposal, drive reuse, reallocation of storage space. The way data is replicated depends on the level of service selected by the customer and on the services provided. When encryption in that place can ensure confidentiality. Crypto-shredding can be used when removing data (on disk).
- The number of people who have access to data that can be compromised (for example, bribed, or forced) increases dramatically. One company may have a small team of administrators, network engineers, and technicians, but cloud storage companies will have many customers and thousands of servers, therefore a much larger team of technical staff with physical and electronic access to almost all data across facilities or probably the whole company. The decryption key stored by the service user, as opposed to the service provider, limits access to data by the employee of the service provider. To share a lot of data in the cloud with multiple users, a large number of keys must be distributed to users via a secure channel for decryption, which should also be stored and managed securely by users on their devices. Saving this key requires a rather expensive secure storage. To overcome that, a key-aggregate cryptosystem can be used.
- This increases the number of networks in which data is sent. Instead of just a local area network (LAN) or storage area network (SAN), data stored in the cloud requires a WAN (wide area network) to connect the two.
- By sharing storage and networking with many other users/customers, it's possible for other customers to access your data. Sometimes because of wrong actions, wrong equipment, bugs and sometimes because of criminal intentions. This risk applies to all types of storage and not just cloud storage. The risk of having data read during transmission can be mitigated through encryption technology. Encryption in transit protects data when sent to and from the cloud service. Rest encryption protects data stored in the service provider. Encrypting data in on-premise on-ramp service systems can provide both types of encryption protection.
Supplier stability
Companies are not permanent and the services and products they provide may change. Switching data storage to another company requires careful investigation and nothing is certain. Contracts arranged in stone can be worthless when the company stops there or the circumstances change. Company can:
- Bankrupt.
- Expand and change the focus.
- Purchased by other large companies.
- Purchased by a company headquartered in or moved to a country that excludes compliance with export restrictions and thereby requires removal.
- Suffer from a disaster that can not be fixed.
Accessibility
- Performance for outsourced storage tends to be lower than local storage, depending on how many customers are willing to spend on WAN bandwidth
- Reliability and availability depends on wide area network availability and the level of precautions taken by the service provider. Reliability should be based on hardware as well as various algorithms used.
- This is given the amount of data storage.
Other issues
- The security of data and data stored in transit may be of concern when storing sensitive data in cloud storage providers
- Users with certain record keeping requirements, such as a public institution that should keep electronic records in accordance with the law, may be complicated by using cloud computing and storage. For example, the US Department of Defense sets up the Agency for Defense Information Systems (DISA) to maintain a list of archive management products that meet all records storage, personally identifiable information (PII), and security requirements (Information Assurance IA)
- Cloud storage is a rich resource for hackers and national security agencies. Because the cloud stores data from many different users and organizations, the hackers see it as a very valuable target.
- Hijacking and copyright infringement can be enabled by sites that allow file archiving. For example, the CodexCloud ebook storage site has faced litigation from intellectual property owners uploaded and shared there, just as GrooveShark and YouTube sites have compared it to.
- Legal aspects, from the point of view of regulatory compliance, are of concern when storing files domestically and especially internationally.
See also
- Cloud collaboration
- Cloud Data Management Interface, better known as CDMI
- The cloud database
- Comparison of the online backup service
- File hosting service
- Mobile cloud storage
- Cloud cooperative storage
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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