Cloud computing has helped address many issues related to the IT sector. Companies are now able to manage their infrastructure, organize their workload, and are also able to virtualize their workspace. One such service provided by the Cloud is storage services. Cloud storage caters to the secure storage demand and requirements.
According to a report by Skyhigh, “The average employee uses 30+ cloud-based services daily”.
This blog will cover the 5 most prominent AWS storage services.
What are Storage Services?
Cloud storage services is a facility that maintains and manages users’ data and makes that data reachable over the internet.
Storing these data over the web does not imply that this data is vulnerable to security threats; cloud storage services are designed to store essential business data plus user information with the utmost security and surveillance.
These storage services store files, databases, and other information, claiming a third-party cloud provider responsible.
What is the requirement for Storage Services?
It’s easy to guess that storage services probably have something to do with storage. Still, cloud storage services have brought many changes to the traditional method of storing data and information. The rise in demand for cloud storage services has occurred because of the quality and additional facilities in terms of performance, security, cost, etc.
Let’s have a look at some significant advantages that it serves.
Advantages of Cloud Storage over other storage mechanisms
The existence of cloud storage services has helped address many industry-related concerns, such as:
- Data access over the Internet: This facility has enabled users to access their data anytime and anywhere without carrying a hard disk or other storage tools.
- Backup/Disaster Recover: Storing data over Cloud storage has also helped preserve data and information from uninvited disasters. Also, it acts as a backup that enables users to take control of data anytime.
- Security: Cloud storage services help manage and maintain data over the internet and provide high-level cloud security from unauthorized access and control.
- Cost: When it comes to the cost, all the cloud services follow the Pay-as-you-go model, which prevents any unnecessary storage costs, unlike traditional storage methods.
- Multi-user access: With cloud storage, it’s very convenient to access data stored over the internet by multiple users at a time, enhancing work efficiency and reducing complexities.
- Automation: One more advantage of using cloud storage is that it automatically manages and updates any file or data without hampering any other ongoing task.
Having understood what storage services are and their advantages, let us further learn some of the storage services provided by Amazon Cloud Services.
Top 5 Storage Services From AWS
AWS is a public cloud service provider with a high-availability storage service for the customer to store and secure data over the years.
The top 5 prominent Storage services from AWS are as follows:
1. Amazon S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service is the most widely used object storage service. Start-up to enterprise-level companies use this storage service because of its multi-dimensional features, including immense scalability, availability, and security.
Amazon S3 is managed from the AWS backend, so it’s always protected no matter what amount of data is stored, be it applications, files, websites, big data, IoT devices data analytics, all at minimal costs.
Another feature that S3 has is on-demand high availability and guarantees 99.9% durability. This storage service is utilized for storage alone and other streaming services.
2. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Storage):
Amazon EBS can be attached to any EC2 instance. Where S3 allows object storage, Amazon EBS provides block storage and allows you to install any operating system. EBS Volumes are placed in availability zones to prevent data loss due to single component failures.
The main advantage of using EBS is low latency performance, which can be scaled up and down as per resources and whenever required. Amazon EBS is available in both SSD and HDD formats.
3. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System):
This managed file system is easily set up in an Amazon console. Now, whenever multiple EC2 instances are in use, all the EC2 instances are required to access the same file system, so the elastic file system is utilized in these cases.
Unlike Amazon EBS, the Amazon Elastic File System is built using the NFSv4 protocol on SSDs; it has much faster thorough code than EBS. As a result, Amazon EFS can be a little costlier and can be used for an enormous analytical workload.
EFS has a distributed file system and can be clubbed with CDN (Content Delivery Network), allowing multiple EC2 instances to access the elastic file system simultaneously.
4. Amazon FSx: Most organizations today use Windows software or Windows suit applications; Amazon FSx can be used whenever any window-specific application is required.
Amazon FSx is flexible enough to interact with these applications and supports all the native Windows-based technologies like SMB protocol, active directory, and distributed file system.
The main advantage of using Amazon FSx is eliminating the administrative overhead of setting up and maintaining the Windows file server. And that’s why it has been preferred since always. Moreover, it also gives a simple, cost-effective way to run a Windows file server on AWS.
5. Amazon Storage Gateway: Amazon Storage Gateway service is a simple way to let the on-premise applications store, access, or archive the data into the AWS cloud. Many organizations will run a hybrid cloud setup, meaning that some workloads will run on the data centers and some on the AWS cloud. In such scenarios, Amazon Storage Gateway will help on-premise applications access the data stored on the AWS cloud. This is achieved by running a hypervisor in one of the machines in your data center, which contains the storage gateway, and it is available on the AWS to connect the S3 or Elastic Block Storage.
This storage gateway is a highly optimized and network-resilient way to move your data on-premise to the Cloud. It also supports legacy backup stores such as virtual tapes to the backup directory, thus eliminating the hassle of setting up the backup with an external engineer.
AWS still dominates the market with a 33% share, while Microsoft Azure is trailing in second place at 16%.
How does Rapyder help with Storage Services?
Rapyder cloud solutions is a global cloud consulting partner of AWS.
If we talk about Cloud Storage services, Rapyder is Committed to providing best-in-class storage services with 24X7 availability and support. The experienced team and excellent collaboration have helped many clients address their storage issues and hindrance.
Apart from that, being an advanced AWS consulting partner, Rapyder has acquired expertise in;
- Managed Amazon Cloud Services
- Cloud Migration
- DevOps
- Well-Architected Framework
- Serverless Computing
- End-User Computing
- Database Services
- Cloud Consulting.
Rapyder works to make the cloud work for you with an innovative approach.
Conclusion
This blog is a clear picture of Cloud storage services and their different advantages. This blog also speaks about the top 5 storage services provided by AWS. Organizations can choose one or more services based on requirements to achieve their business goals. AWS always offers high availability and high durability storage services so that its users need not worry much about the safety of their data.
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Thanks for reading.