Storing, securing, and accessing valuable data is extremely important in this digital era. Here are a few tips on why you need data storage, how to secure your storage, how to access the storage on-the-go and who could provide secure data storage and disaster recovery.
Most everyone from large enterprises to individuals have confidential and highly secure data which is stored on some form of storage media. Individuals typically choose external hard disks or USB’s to store their data, while organizations opt for dedicated services with some backup plan in place. However, as data grows in volume it can become a bit tedious to maintain data integrity, security and continuity. In the off chance that disaster strikes, it is likely that all data will be lost leading to incomparable loss. Therefore, instead of waiting for a disaster to strike and then react, we can begin looking now at the best options available to store and secure data.
There are, generally speaking, three categories of storing techniques in the market today:
- Block Level Storage
- File Level Storage
- Object Level Storage.
Storage vendors provide storing facilities with web access. Cloud storage, for example, provides a lot more benefits, but that is a different topic.
Related: Transition from “difficult to change” to Evolutionary Cloud Architecture
Storage Types
SAN (Storage Area Networks)
Large enterprises normally prefer SAN which can be set up with Statistical Analysis Systems (SAS), Internet Small Computer System Interfaces (ISCSI), Fiber Channels (FC), Fibre Channels over Ethernet (FCoE) at different speeds.
NAS (Network Attached Storage)
Small-scale enterprises prefer to go with NAS Storage, as they need less data to be stored when compared with large-scale enterprises.
Catalyst Object
Catalyst Object Store works for both small and large scale enterprises and has multiple advantages over the Virtual Tape and NAS storage systems. Any unstructured data can grow in 100PBs
Comparison between Block File and Object level Storage:
Following are some of the factors to be considered when buying storage devices:-
- Backup tool interface.
- Training to be provided by the company.
- Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) technologies that help to store redundant data on MSA consoles.
- High Availability/ zero downtime.
- Replication – Anywhere /anytime data.
- Disaster Recovery- if you lose your storage devices due to some disaster, you will still be able to recover data.
- Deduplication – lower the bandwidth to get better performance – client side or target side.
- Thin Provisioning – loosely couples the storage device to the customer environment to scale up/down in the future.
