Consultor

Managing the information that drives the enterprise

STORAGE
Buyer’s Checklist:

HYBRID CLOUD
STORAGE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Hybrid storage cloud services and products offer a “best of both worlds” approach by bridging locally installed storage and cloud storage. Here’s what you need to know to evaluate and configure a hybrid cloud storage solution.

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Evaluating hybrid cloudproducts and services Key considerations: Hybrid cloud services The order of things: Planning for hybrid storage

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Buyer’s Checklist:

HYBRID CLOUD STORAGE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Evaluating hybrid storage products and services

Key considerations: Hybrid cloud services

The order of things: Planning for hybrid storage

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Hybrid storage cloud services and products offer a “best ofboth worlds” approach by bridging locally installed storage and cloud storage. Here’s what you need to know to evaluate and configure a hybrid cloud storage solution.
B Y P H I L G OO D W I N

LOUD STORAGE SERVICES are attractive to a variety of organiza-

tions (from small- and medium-sized businesses [SMBs] to large enterprises) that need to implement data storage systems but don’t want tolay out big capital expenditures. Cloud storage is a pay-as-you-go utility that can scale up and down according to current requirements. But many companies are still hesitant to commit to cloud storage because of the prospect of protracted data recoveries and the difficulties of interfacing with storage providers. A new class of storage product has emerged to help address this confidence gap:hybrid cloud storage services. The hybrid services may be delivered in plug-and-play appliances or as software-only

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solutions that require a little DIY. Either way, the hybrid approach is an effective means of tapping into cloud storage. As you explore the hybrid cloud storage landscape, you’ll have to answer some questions such as: • Is a software or hardware product best? • Do we need an appliance with local storage? • Will we use the hybrid product for primary or near-line data? • How will thehybrid approach affect backup? • How good is the storage service behind the hybrid product?

Step 1: HYBRID CLOUD STORAGE AND YOUR IT STRATEGY
Cloud services are all about reducing cost. There’s nothing a cloud environment can provide that can’t be had privately, but cloud service providers should be able to provide common services at lower cost. Multiple data centers, economy of scale andstandardized operations are factors cloud providers can leverage to reduce the cost of delivering IT services. For many IT organizations, however, a wholesale shift to A hybrid cloud implementation cloud services simply isn’t may be the right solution for practical. The size and scope of organizations that need to retain existing operations may make a large-scale transition to cloud some in-house IToperations too disruptive to consider. but still want to reduce the cost Moreover, some applications of some storage services. may not be candidates for cloud, so organizations would have to contend with two entirely separate IT operations: in-house and cloud. A hybrid cloud implementation may be the right solution for organizations that need to retain some in-house IT operations but still want toreduce the cost of some storage services. In that case, hybrid cloud specifically refers to storage. It doesn’t entail application compute resources, even if such resources are available for disaster recovery (DR) purposes. As the hybrid cloud name implies, these storage configurations span between in-house implementations (either private cloud or typical in-house infrastructure) and third-party...