Venyu Blog

George Crump, lead analyst of Storage Switzerland, an IT analyst firm focused on the storage and virtualization segments, recently launched a series of articles on Information Week on the myriad of ways organizations can move data into the cloud. While the series is on-going, his post, “What Business Data Should Be in The Cloud” is must-reading for the novice as well as experienced “cloud “seeder” alike.

According to Crump, the first area to examine is how much data is being accessed on a moment by moment basis. Using this calculus combined with the data type will determine how large the local gateway cache will need to be and how often that data will need to be recalled from the cloud. Crump qualifies this recommendation with the caveat that although the cost to store the cache is or should be static, it is the movement of data from your local cache from the cloud that will functionally delay an application. In fact, the more often that data can be served from a local cache, the better.

Crump also gives “props” to the impact of restoring data back from the cloud in the increasing popularity of backup and archiving data. As he correctly points out, the backup copy in the cloud mostly serves as a long term retention area. As such, the easiest data set use-case is the file share use-case. This is based on the theory that most files on a file server are only active for a few days before they become dormant, an ideal use-case for cloud storage as older files are migrated to the cloud.  Even if they do need to be recalled from cloud storage later, a single file access is relatively fast.

As for databases, Crump recommends identifying applications that have a small portion of the application accessed on a regular basis, such as Microsoft SharePoint. In the future he suggests that as developers begin to build out transaction-oriented databases, they are more likely to embrace the availability of cloud storage which will allow them to auto-segment sections of data so that it can be restored on different storage types automatically and the cloud could be one of those types.

Catch up with George’s series of articles here: Part 1: How To Use Cloud Storage and Part 2:  How To Get Data To The Cloud: Onramps