The Business Case for Cloud File Storage

Learn how cloud file systems can support common use cases while simplifying infrastructure and reducing TCO. This GigaBrief report provides a decision roadmap that can help you make better decisions around storage.

What it Does Icon

What it Does

Cloud-based file storage solutions fall into two categories:

  • Cloud file systems focus on high-performance file access for cloud-based AI, HPC, and big data workloads
  • Distributed cloud file storage aims at enterprise and distributed workloads, e.g., collaboration, NAS replacement
Benefits Icon

Benefits

  • Highly scalable, more accessible than block storage
  • Lower TCO than block storage and on-premise NAS
  • Simplifies migration to the cloud without major changes
Urgency Icon

Urgency

Do it now if you are looking to:

  • Reduce costs, particularly for less accessed and archival file storage and services, potentially as part of a multi-tier architecture
  • Deploy highly scalable file storage to support new workload types such as cloud-based AI or HPC
  • Migrate systems to the cloud, and need to support this with appropriate file-based services
Risk Level Icon

Risk Level

Shift of file services to the cloud needs to take into account existing file use and access, so nothing is lost in migration

Existing cloud-based capabilities are still maturing, especially classification, compliance, and data sovereignty

Security and data protection (including ransomware) need to be considered

30/60/90 Plan Icon

30/60/90 Plan

30 days: evaluate and classify use cases according to priority, scalability and performance

60 days: evaluate solutions with research and PoCs. Identify operational costs, group interdependent applications and data

90 days: define a migration plan that takes into account network limitations and potential egress fees of the cloud provider

Time to Value Icon

Time to Value

Cloud-based file storage should show an immediate TCO gain

Costs of migration should be amortized within a period of months

What are the Benefits of Cloud File Storage?

In recent years, file systems have become more cloud-friendly, offering better integration with cloud technologies such as object storage. This brings several advantages:

  • Better scalability. Policy-driven tiering mechanisms allow cold data to be moved to S3-compatible storage, saving precious resources in the high-performance tier.
  • Best combination of speed and $/GB. File storage gateways specifically designed to work with an object storage back-end provide a good balance of performance and cost.
  • Simplified data migrations and synchronization. Many file storage systems can replicate data to remote files or object stores in the cloud or on-premises. This makes it possible to synchronize and serve data sets across different infrastructures to optimize compute-data proximity and reduce latency.
  • Disaster Recovery (DR). Syncing data to a remote object store enables users to leverage a cheaper storage repository in the cloud and populate a file system only if necessary.

These capabilities are particularly important now that vendors are optimizing their file storage for flash memory and access speed, enabling users to build a multi-tier infrastructure to optimize $/GB across on-premise and cloud-based systems.

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