The Private Cloud Data Storage Solution

IBM recently introduced several new entry-level models to their Storwize models which add more memory, more CPU power and additional features such as Data Reduction pools and data-at-rest Encryption.

Data storage solutions are continually being updated and improved to cater for the inflow of an unprecedented amount of data, caused by an increase in human use of digital assets. Data pipelines have to scale to accommodate petabytes – in some cases, even exabytes – of data. A solution that can’t be scaled, to meet the required capacity, will mean operations will stall and have to be re-architected.

The Importance of Data

The emergence of technology and the response to the digital transformation – which no one had anticipated in the previous decades – has led to data now becoming the most valuable business asset.

Data is at the heart of every business, and its applicability is endless. Data that is real-time, structured, unstructured, predictive, streaming and mission critical can be collected from every endpoint, person, device, click, swipe, server log and stream. This data can be curated to conduct and deliver actionable intelligence for every business, and the insights offered by data are too great to ignore.

Sophisticated data storage solutions focus on how data is generated, managed, and consumed within an organisation. This understanding creates a set of technologies that can be leveraged to deliver a cohesive solution for any business.

Northdoor, a UK IT consultancy which specialises in data security, IBM storage and cloud computing, discusses some of the technology behind Private Cloud data storage solutions.

Private Cloud Data Storage

Cloud technology is not new, and it works by storing digital data on an off-site storage system maintained by a third party. The data is saved to a remote database, and the internet provides the connection between the computer and the database.

The Cloud offers many considerable benefits as a data storage solution due to its agility, ease of use and scalability. It is a cost-effective repository that makes it possible to collect and store nearly unlimited amounts of any type of data, from any source. It has become an almost necessary transition for most companies, as the prospect of not having to grow and manage physical data centres, is an alluring endeavour.

Its ease of remote access for obtaining data has allowed the Cloud to become associated with a more flexible and efficient means of data storage. There is no longer a need to carry around a physical storage device or use the same computer to save and retrieve data. Multi-access solutions have also been developed, to allow more collaborative ways of work, and have allowed businesses not to be limited by their finite storage capacities.

Cloud storage systems generally store the same data on multiple machines; this is called redundancy. Redundancy ensures that clients can access their data requests at any given time. Another way they plan a contingency is by using different power supplies on different servers that store the same data, this way, should one of the power supplies fail, there will still be a backup of the same data.

Security Measures for Private Cloud Storage Solutions

Cloud storage companies invest a lot of money and time into security measures to limit the possibility of data theft or corruption.

Some measures they put into place include:

• Encryption: A sophisticated algorithm is used to encode the data on the servers. In order to decode an encrypted file, a user will need the encryption key.
• Authentication: Creating a username and password is necessary to access the data. In more recent years, having a 2 step authentication process has become more common to ensure that there is another level of security in place.
• Authorisation: Only allowing certain people clearance to access the data ensures that at any given time, a user knows who can look at the data. The access can be varied for the different levels in an organisation; for example, a lower level executive will have limited access to parts of the data compared to the CEO.

Conclusion

Data is the future. Every year there is a new advancement in data storage solutions from hybrid cloud storage to its applicability in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Organisations need the best strategies to collect, manage and process volumes of customer data from a variety of channels to have a competitive advantage. They need to adapt to the new data storage technologies in order to continually evolve and facilitate their data use.