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An Inside Look at Storing Unstructured Data on Cloud, On-Premise and Hybrid

Today, businesses are required to store increasing volumes of data in a growing array of forms. Structured data in tidy databases or enterprise apps are no longer the only sources of business data. Businesses might need to collect, store, and manage documents, emails, photos, videos, audio files, and even social network posts. Every one of them includes data that could help people make better decisions.

However, this poses difficulties for IT systems that were built to handle structured data rather than unstructured. This is due to the fact that unstructured data has different long-term storage needs than structured data, making it difficult for systems that efficiently store databases.

According to market experts IDC and Gartner, over 80% of new enterprise data are currently unstructured. Unfortunately, the volume and variety of such data were not intended for standard storage solutions.

Unfortunately, traditional storage technologies are not cut out to manage either the volume or variety of such data. This blog looks at how unstructured data can be stored on-premise, Cloud and Hybrid.

Managing unstructured data on-premise

The traditional method of storing unstructured data locally has been through a hierarchical file system delivered either through dedicated network-attached storage or direct-attached storage in a server (NAS).

Generally speaking, flash-based NAS hardware from the major providers is ideally suited for applications that demand low latency, such as media streaming or, more recently, training AI systems. However, vendors are now providing local versions of object storage for huge datasets and the requirement to make switching between on-premise and cloud systems easier.

Performance, security, compliance, and control are the major advantages of on-premise storage for unstructured data since businesses are aware of their storage architecture and can manage it precisely.

The disadvantages are expenditures (including up-front costs), inability to scale (even scale-out NAS systems experience performance constraints at extremely large volumes), a lack of redundancy, and perhaps even a lack of resilience.

Managing unstructured data on Cloud

Cloud storage can manage large amounts of unstructured data effectively. Resilience is increased by using a global namespace and keeping metadata and data separate. In fact, many business applications where I/O and particularly latency are less important can now be successfully run on cloud object storage.

Hardware (up-front) costs are reduced by cloud storage, which also offers the possibility of limitless long-term storage. Additionally, businesses do not require redundant data protection methods. This can be accomplished using the cloud service provider’s offerings or, with the correct architecture, by distributing data among other vendors’ clouds.

Since the data resides in the Cloud, there are little, or absolutely no performance hits when users move around their organization or work remotely.

The drawbacks of cloud storage are lower performance than on-premise storage, particularly for I/O-intensive or latency-intolerant applications, potential management challenges (anyone can spin up cloud storage), and potential hidden expenses.

Unstructured data on Hybrid

Increasingly more vendors are now providing hybrid systems, which can combine the benefits of local, on-premise storage with object technology and the scalability of cloud resources. Due to the variety of unstructured data, the range of file sizes, and the potential for multiple applications to access it, hybrid combines the best of both worlds.

As it goes, CIOs and data management specialists are highly interested in a system that can handle both relatively tiny text files, like emails, and massive imaging files, and make them accessible to business intelligence, AI systems, and human users with equal efficiency.

Organizations also want to ensure their storage systems are prepared for emerging trends like containers. By using a hybrid cloud, it is possible to optimize storage systems for particular workloads while maintaining scale-out NAS, direct-attached, and SAN storage when necessary for the application and performance.

However, data can be moved to the Cloud for long-term storage and archiving and can be accessed by lower-performance apps. Data could eventually migrate easily across cloud providers and to and from the Cloud without the application or the user noticing.

Data storage technologies, which use both local and Cloud storage to accommodate unstructured data, have already made this possible.

End note

There is still a long way to go before genuinely location-neutral storage becomes a reality, not least because data transport fees are a key component of cloud business models. According to the Enterprise Storage Forum, this could result in increased prices.

According to recent studies, nearly half of businesses plan to use traditional cloud storage more frequently. There is no one-size-fits-all technology for unstructured data at this time, which is a crucial point to remember.

Netlabs Global offers proven and effective data center, on-premise, and hybrid solutions for modern businesses to help manage data and applications intelligently. Talk to us today to learn more about how our data center solutions and services can help your business.

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