Can public cloud computing services really offer enterprises substantial savings over traditional storage hardware? One of the mostly frequently touted benefits of public infrastructure-as-a-service is the pay-as-you-go business model, under which organizations are charged only for the amount of resources used and the duration of the usage. However, this arrangement can sometimes distort the true, long-term costs of storing and processing data on someone else's systems.
The hidden costs of public cloud
There are plenty of overlooked fees and requirements that, without proper management, can quickly transform public cloud platforms into money pits. Instances may have to run for long periods of times or be reserved beforehand in order to ensure acceptable performance on shared infrastructure. Networking bandwidth that was static and prepaid in a company data center are now likely to rise as consumption increases.
Similarly, there's the overall issue of monitoring costs that are highly variable, with spikes during times of high utilization. Companies that are new to the cloud may need time to prepare for different scenarios – for example, an application becoming widely used, or a big data project that's rapidly scaling – that will require a lot of resources from the provider.
"Organizations that move to the cloud will need to do a lot of work to develop systems to predict and manage ongoing costs," wrote TechTarget's Greg Ferro. "Consumption-based pricing requires constant monitoring to ensure that plans and actual costs are correct. The ensuing weekly cost-control meetings can cut into useful IT activities that would have improved service and functionality in other areas."
Moreover, public cloud management can become increasingly complex as ever larger collections of data are moved into storage. Ferro termed this phenomenon "data gravity," or the ongoing generation of new information – server logs, backups – by applications and services that are already data-hungry. As a result, enterprises have to keep procuring more resources, but doing so may risk spending more on cloud than they did on traditional systems.
NetApp CTO Jay Kidd picked up on this point at a recent Wells Fargo event. He explained that leading IaaS providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google charge roughly 25 cents per gigabyte of storage per day. Over the course of just a few months, the tab would equal the price of common devices such as hard disk drive.
Granted, managing on-premises storage infrastructure has its own challenges and can become expensive depending on the software and hardware used, but overcoming them may be more economically and logistically feasible than migrating significant amounts of assets to the cloud. Utilizing software-defined technologies, industry-standard hardware and/or open source platforms such as OpenStack can all contribute to more cost-effective cloud storage systems.
The software-defined solution to the problem of expensive storage setups
Many enterprises need scalable storage architectures, whether via a service provider or an on-premises solution. Mobile devices and demanding applications are pushing existing setups to the limits, and IT departments constantly need more resources. Computing, networking and storage all come at a cost, but they don't have to break the bank.
One way in which organizations are avoiding steep fees is by taking up software-defined storage. SDS lets users become less reliant on specific types of hardware. Nexenta, a Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance partner, has pioneered products in this area that give enterprises increased flexibility while building and managing storage systems. More specifically, companies can pick what operating system they want to run on a unified appliance, yet attain consistent performance and features.
Silicon Mechanics, another partner in the Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance, has taken up the NexentaStor 4.0 update that includes improvements in media error handling and controller performance. With advanced technology and a low price tag, SDS solutions such as NexentaStor are demonstrating that enterprise cloud storage need not be onerously expensive.
"I am extremely interested in the new features offered by NexentaStor 4.0, especially the ability to offload metadata and the asynchronous deletes capability," stated ESRG IT manager John Schleigh. "I expect that being able to get that out of RAM will help us a lot. I am also looking forward to taking advantage of the improved compression ratio and the updated Common Internet File System (CIFS)."
IDC has noted that among enterprises in the U.K., SDS is popular because it simplifies infrastructure management, automates routine operations, improves performance and fosters scalability, all of which contribute to lower total cost of ownership. Additional benefits may include enhanced security and decreased exposure to vendor lock in, with the latter being a common issue with public cloud arrangements that depend exclusively on one provider's technology.
High-capacity HDDs strengthen the case for enterprise cloud storage
Software has played a pivotal role in giving organizations storage alternatives to variable public IaaS. However, it's only one part of the reason why enterprises now have a wide range of options for managing data.
Cloud storage hardware has been improving. Seagate revealed this month its 6TB Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4, which it has touted as its fastest drive ever. The HDD does not use shingled magnetic recording or helium technology, meaning that it has a highly competitive price that can go up against not only flash, but also public IaaS per GB costs.
"While He in a drive can allow more disks in a drive with other advantages on power consumption, heat generation and higher capacity the costs will be higher with the extra disks and with the hermetic sealing of the drive vs. a conventional drive with higher areal density," explained Forbes contributor Tom Coughlin. "Likewise a hard disk drive with increased areal density will have performance benefits compared to a drive using SMR technology, especially for overwriting prior data."
The Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 has increased areal density and support 12 GB SAS connectivity. IT Business Edge's Arthur Cole estimates that it has a similar price per TB – $100 – to older 4TB models. With more storage technology refinements on the horizon, organizations will be able to continue building economical, high-performance storage infrastructure.
