At the rate of data growing in today’s world it makes no surprise that Cloud Storage is also growing its importance. If you are a person who know about internet then you might know what a cloud in technical terms means. In general internet can be considered as a cloud. Even in term Cloud storage the cloud has the same meaning. So, If you now read by applying the meaning of cloud to it then you will interpret it as internet storage and that is what it means to convey.
But to be exact, It is not the all. There are many differences between the way you think for the data that is stored in internet as traditional storage system and cloud storage system. Cloud storage is a concept of networked online storage system. The one striking features that distinguishes a cloud storage system from other traditional data storage systems is that a cloud storage is made up of distributed resources where the data is replicated across the connected cloud storage servers there by providing access from nearest cloud storage server and reliability on availability of the data you store in cloud.
So to explain in layman terms , A cloud storage provides services for storing your files, when you move a file to cloud then it replicates the file on its servers which spread across the globe which allows you to pick your file back again from anywhere . Even if one of the cloud storage server is unavailable the data comes then from the nearest cloud storage server.
Now let us go in depth for understanding it much better, Following are the key characteristics of a cloud storage.
| Manageability |
| Cost is one of the key factors for cloud storage, best cost and service depends on the sucessful management of systems with optimal resources |
| Access Methods |
| There are different access protocols to access your files on cloud storage. Most of the cloud service providers implement multiple protocols but Web Service API’s are common and many of them are implemented using REST principles |
| Performance |
| There can be many factors for analyzing the performance of a cloud storage service. The ability to move data between cloud storage and user is one of the most important factors. TCP protocol is used to transfer the data between user and a remote cloud storage and one main aspect of TCP and hence there are many factors with it coming into the play like latency, packet loss etc. |
| Scalability |
| The ability to scale your services as per requirement is one of the appealing aspects of cloud storage. Storage Scaleability , Bandwidth Scaleability and Geographic storage scaleability are the different scaleable opportunities for a cloud storage user which means improved cost efficiency and increased complexity for storage provider |
| Data availability |
| The availability of data is all that matters for us it should be instantaneously available wherever we are and wheneve we want and that is the entire purpose of cloud storage to us. The down time is the factor to see the availability of our data. |
| Cost |
| Cost is one of the important aspects for any user , The best quality services are provided by best quality management with improved storage efficiency techniques. |
