Organizations eager to modernize their approach to storage are discovering a wealth of options available through the public cloud. Sentinel Technologies regularly offers guidance to our customers as they seek to expand their public cloud investments, and often encounter three primary considerations when migrating or expanding storage capabilities.

One of your first considerations for cloud storage should involve determining which type of storage is best for your specific organization and each use case. Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Simple Storage Service (S3) in 2006. The S3 offering brought blob storage to center stage alongside file and block storage. Each of these storage types have different use cases and provide unique benefits, so do your research before deciding which one will satisfy your needs.

The new cloud consumption models feature variable costs for transfer and storage. It is common for the transfer costs to be higher than the actual cost to store the data. This brings us to the second consideration – optimizing caching and data transfer. These variable costs can influence architectural optimization by using caching appliances like the AWS Storage Gateway, private network endpoints, or dedicated circuits such as AWS Direct Connect.

The third and final consideration is that of scale. Scale benefits organizations by offering both extremely small options and extremely large options. Although variable costs require attention to manage with accuracy, they also allow for extremely small costs that enable you to rapidly evaluate new architectures. Additionally, as data rapidly expands it can be more efficient to use cloud services for massive scale. Being able to evaluate new concepts in real time for the cost of a meal offers immense value.

These are three considerations you should have in mind when preparing to modernize your storage solutions, whether on premise or via a public cloud provider.

• Type of Storage
• Data Transfer & Caching
• Scale Options

Sentinel Technologies offers multiple options to help customers gain value from cloud storage solutions quickly. Please contact us if you would like to learn more about cloud storage solutions and how they can benefit your organization.