Storage Options in Cloud: Block, File, and Object Storage

Overview

Cloud storage is becoming more advanced and adaptable. The flexibility and low cost of cloud storage were its original draws, and to meet those needs, the bulk of cloud services built their offerings around object storage, most notably Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3.

AWS cloud-based Simple Storage Service is referred to as “buckets,” which serves as a great metaphor for how it operates. Users essentially dump their data into AWS, and the object technology handles the rest. The top three cloud service providers, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform have responded by introducing an ever-expanding menu of storage alternatives since object storage, or at least object storage used in isolation, cannot meet all of an organization’s data storage demands.

Popular storage architectures with file, block, and object storage are among them, as are services like archiving and backup. The major three are aiming to give their consumers flexibility and a strong local storage alternative by adjusting their storage offers. For virtual machine (VM) storage, block storage, like Google’s Persistent Disk, offers an alternative to the data center.

AWS Elastic File System, however, is an NFS file-based system that can integrate on-premises and the cloud. Azure additionally provides SMB-based cloud file shares. There are several types of objects, blocks, and files available from each of the three suppliers. Benefits include the capacity to scale up or down on demand, a variety of performance and price options, and application support. Performance-based storage, in particular, has the potential to become costly. Cloud storage is by no means always affordable. Data cannot (yet) be moved effortlessly between the three providers and putting data into the cloud could potentially harm performance.

Use Cases

Still, there are a few distinct use cases for various cloud storage solutions. Archiving, backup, and analytics are all applications that require the storage of vast amounts of data, and these are the areas where object storage excels due to its efficiency and robustness. However, as speed increases, object storage is being used more and more in applications for the internet of things (IoT), hosting websites, and perhaps even enterprise applications. Suppliers can more easily offer storage tiers based on speed, cost, and frequency of access thanks to the nature of object storage. Block and file may appear less adaptable in contrast to this, yet this is not necessarily the case.

3 Popular Cloud Storage Providers

1. AWS

• File: The NFS-based Elastic File System (EFS) from Amazon works with both cloud and local storage. As a Standard storage class and EFS IA, AWS offers this (infrequent access). EFS has a throughput of over 10GBps. Storage designed specifically for the Windows File Server platform is called FSx.
• Block: The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is compatible with the Elastic Block Store. SSD volumes designed for “general use” provide a base performance of 3 IOPS/GB. Up to 64,000 IOPS and 1,000 MBps throughput is supported by provisioned IOPS SSD volumes.
• Object: S3 is an AWS object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.

2. Azure

• File: Azure Files supports concurrent file sharing mounting both on-premises and in the cloud and uses SMB. support for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. 4PB maximum storage capacity, 25Gbps ingress, and 50Gbps outgress.
• Block: Managed drives with a maximum disk size of 65,536GB for Ultra disk, 160,000 down to 32,76GB for regular disk, with 2,000 IOPS, are provided by Azure Disk for Azure virtual machines.
• Object: Petabyte-scale object storage is available via Azure Blob.

3. GCP

• File: Cloud Filestore offers regular and premium storage options and offers NAS for Google Compute Engine and Kubernetes Engines. Standard capacities range from 1TB to 10+TB, with 10+TB systems having 1000 IOPS and 180MBps read performance. With a read rate of 1.2GBps and 60,000 IOPS, premium storage starts at 3.5+TB.
• Block: Persistent disk block storage is available in capacities up to 64TB and includes local SSDs, NVMe storage, persistent SSDs, and regular persistent disks. The range of write IOPS is 15,000 to 30,000, and the range of read IOPS is 15,000 to 100,000.
• Object: Different locations are offered by Google object or blob storage depending on the required performance and redundancy. Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive are the four main storage tiers. According to user-specified rules, GCP’s Object Lifecycle Management tool automatically switches storage to a less expensive tier.

Conclusion

When using cloud storage, there is no need to purchase hardware, storage, or other infrastructure. It is feasible to add and remove capacity on demand, make quick adjustments to performance and retention characteristics, and only pay for storage that is used. Cloud computing makes it possible for IT to quickly provide the exact quantity of storage needed. Storage system management is no longer required, allowing IT to focus on troubleshooting complex application issues.

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