The term hybrid cloud has been around for a while—we originally published this explainer in 2017. But time hasn’t necessarily made things clearer. Maybe you hear folks talk about your company’s hybrid cloud approach, but what does that really mean? If you’re confused about the hybrid cloud, you’re not alone. 

Hybrid cloud is a computing approach that uses both private and public cloud resources with some kind of orchestration between them. The term has been applied to a wide variety of IT solutions, so it’s no wonder the concept breeds confusion. 

In this post, we’ll explain what a hybrid cloud is, how it can benefit your business, and how to choose a cloud storage provider for your hybrid cloud strategy.

What Is the Hybrid Cloud?

A hybrid cloud is an infrastructure approach that uses both private and public resources. Let’s first break down those key terms:

• Public cloud: When you use a public cloud, you are storing your data in another company’s internet-accessible data center. A public cloud service allows anybody to sign up for an account, and share data center resources with other customers or tenants. Instead of worrying about the costs and complexity of operating an on-premises data center, a cloud storage user only needs to pay for the cloud storage they need.
• Private cloud: In contrast, a private cloud is specifically designed for a single tenant. Think of a private cloud as a permanently reserved private dining room at a restaurant—no other customer can use that space. As a result, private cloud services can be more expensive than public clouds. Traditionally, private clouds typically lived on on-premises infrastructure, meaning they were built and maintained on company property. Now, private clouds can be maintained and managed on-premises by an organization or by a third party in a data center. The key defining factor is that the cloud is dedicated to a single tenant or organization.

Those terms are important to know to understand the hybrid cloud architecture approach. Hybrid clouds are defined by a combined management approach, which means there is some type of orchestration between the private and public environments that allows workloads and data to move between them in a flexible way as demands, needs, and costs change. This gives you flexibility when it comes to data deployment and usage.  

In other words, if you have some IT resources on-premises that you are replicating or sharing with an external vendor—congratulations, you have a hybrid cloud!

Hybrid Cloud Examples

Here are a few examples of how a hybrid cloud can be used:

1. As an active archive: You might establish a protocol that says all accounting files that have not been changed in the last year, for example, are automatically moved off-premises to cloud storage archive to save cost and reduce the amount of storage needed on-site. You can still access the files; they are just no longer stored on your local systems. 
2. To meet compliance requirements: Let’s say some of your data is subject to strict data privacy requirements, but other data you manage isn’t as closely protected. You could keep highly regulated data on premises in a private cloud and the rest of your data in a public cloud. 
3. To scale capacity: If you’re in an industry that experiences seasonal or frequent spikes like retail or ecommerce, these spikes can be handled by a public cloud which provides the elasticity to deal with times when your data needs exceed your on-premises capacity.
4. For digital transformation: A hybrid cloud lets you adopt cloud resources in a phased approach as you expand your cloud presence.

Hybrid Cloud vs. Multi-cloud: What’s the Diff?

You wouldn’t be the first person to think that the terms multi-cloud and hybrid cloud appear similar. Both of these approaches involve using multiple clouds. However, multi-cloud uses two clouds of the same type in combination (i.e., two or more public clouds) and hybrid cloud approaches combine a private cloud with a public cloud. One cloud approach is not necessarily better than the other—they simply serve different use cases. 

For example, let’s say you’ve already invested in significant on-premises IT infrastructure, but you want to take advantage of the scalability of the cloud. A hybrid cloud solution may be a good fit for you. 

Alternatively, a multi-cloud approach may work best for you if you are already in the cloud and want to mitigate the risk of a single cloud provider having outages or issues. 

Hybrid Cloud Benefits

A hybrid cloud approach allows you to take advantage of the best elements of both private and public clouds. The primary benefits are flexibility, scalability, and cost savings.

Benefit 1: Flexibility and Scalability

One of the top benefits of the hybrid cloud is its flexibility. Managing IT infrastructure on-premises can be time consuming and expensive, and adding capacity requires advance planning, procurement, and upfront investment. 

The public cloud is readily accessible and able to provide IT resources whenever needed on short notice. For example, the term “cloud bursting” refers to the on-demand and temporary use of the public cloud when demand exceeds resources available in the private cloud. A private cloud, on the other hand, provides the absolute fastest access speeds since it is generally located on-premises. (But cloud providers are catching up fast, for what it’s worth.) For data that is needed with the absolute lowest levels of latency, it may make sense for the organization to use a private cloud for current projects and store an active archive in a less expensive, public cloud.

Benefit 2: Cost Savings

Within the hybrid cloud framework, the public cloud segment offers cost-effective IT resources, eliminating the need for upfront capital expenses and associated labor costs. IT professionals gain the flexibility to optimize configurations, choose the most suitable service provider, and determine the optimal location for each workload. This strategic approach reduces costs by aligning resources with specific tasks. Furthermore, the ability to easily scale, redeploy, or downsize services enhances efficiency, curbing unnecessary expenses and contributing to overall cost savings.

Comparing Private vs. Hybrid Cloud Storage Costs

To understand the difference in storage costs between a purely on-premises solution and a hybrid cloud solution, we’ll present two scenarios. For each scenario, we’ll use data storage amounts of 100TB, 1PB, and 2PB. Each table is the same format, all we’ve done is change how the data is distributed: private (on-premises) or public (off-premises). We are using the costs for our own Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage in this example. The math can be adapted for any set of numbers you wish to use.

Scenario 1    100% of data on-premises storage

Scenario 2    20% of data on-premises with 80% public cloud storage (Backblaze B2)

As you can see, using a hybrid cloud solution and storing 80% of the data in the cloud with a provider like Backblaze B2 can result in significant savings over storing only on-premises.

Choosing a Cloud Storage Provider for Your Hybrid Cloud

Okay, so you understand the benefits of using a hybrid cloud approach, what next? Determining the right mix of cloud services may be intimidating because there are so many public cloud options available. Fortunately, there are a few decision factors you can use to simplify setting up your hybrid cloud solution. Here’s what to think about when choosing a public cloud storage provider:

• Ease of use: Avoiding a steep learning curve can save you hours of work effort in managing your cloud deployments. By contrast, overly complicated pricing tiers or bells and whistles you don’t need can slow you down.
• Data security controls: Compare how each cloud provider facilitates proper data controls. For example, take a look at features like authentication, Object Lock, and encryption.
• Data egress fees: Some cloud providers charge additional fees for data egress (i.e., removing data from the cloud). These fees can make it more expensive to switch between providers. In addition to fees, check the data speeds offered by the provider.
• Interoperability: Flexibility and interoperability are key reasons to use cloud services. Before signing up for a service, understand the provider’s integration ecosystem. A lack of needed integrations may place a greater burden on your team to keep the service running effectively.
• Storage tiers: Some providers offer different storage tiers where you sacrifice access for lower costs. While the promise of inexpensive cold storage can be attractive, evaluate whether you can afford to wait hours or days to retrieve your data.
• Pricing transparency: Pay careful attention to the cloud provider’s pricing model and tier options. Consider building a spreadsheet to compare a shortlist of cloud providers’ pricing models.

When Hybrid Cloud Might Not Always Be the Right Fit

The hybrid cloud may not always be the optimal solution, particularly for smaller organizations with limited IT budgets that might find a purely public cloud approach more cost-effective. The substantial setup and operational costs of private servers could be prohibitive.

A thorough understanding of workloads is crucial to effectively tailor the hybrid cloud, ensuring the right blend of private, public, and traditional IT resources for each application and maximizing the benefits of the hybrid cloud architecture.

So, Should You Go Hybrid?

Big picture, anything that helps you respond to IT demands quickly, easily, and affordably is a win. With a hybrid cloud, you can avoid some big up-front capital expenses for in-house IT infrastructure, making your CFO happy. Being able to quickly spin up IT resources as they’re needed will appeal to the CTO and VP of operations.

So, given all that, we’ve arrived at the bottom line and the question is, should you or your organization embrace hybrid cloud infrastructure?According to Flexera’s 2023 State of the Cloud report, 72% of enterprises utilize a hybrid cloud strategy. That indicates that the benefits of the hybrid cloud appeal to a broad range of companies.

If an organization approaches implementing a hybrid cloud solution with thoughtful planning and a structured approach, a hybrid cloud can deliver on-demand flexibility, empower legacy systems, and applications with new capabilities, and become a catalyst for digital transformation. The result can be an elastic and responsive infrastructure that has the ability to quickly adapt to changing demands of the business.

As data management professionals increasingly recognize the advantages of the hybrid cloud, we can expect more and more of them to embrace it as an essential part of their IT strategy.

Tell Us What You’re Doing With the Hybrid Cloud

Are you currently embracing the hybrid cloud, or are you still uncertain or hanging back because you’re satisfied with how things are currently? We’d love to hear your comments below on how you’re approaching your cloud architecture decisions.

FAQs About Hybrid Cloud

The post What Is Hybrid Cloud? appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

The sheer number of cloud services on the market today can be bewildering. If you’re just starting out with the cloud, it helps to have answers to some basic questions.

Should you use private cloud storage? Public cloud storage? Pick the cheapest option and call it a day? That’s tempting, but knowing the difference can help you make a more informed decision.

In this post, we’ll dig into the pros and cons of a private cloud versus a public cloud, explain how a hybrid cloud strategy works, and help you decide which is right for you.

The First Question: What Exactly Is the Cloud?

Before you can understand the difference between a private cloud and a public cloud, we should take a step back and define what the cloud is in the first place.

Put simply, the cloud is a collection of purpose-built servers. These servers can perform one or more services (storage, compute, database, email, web, etc.) and can exist anywhere as long as they’re accessible to whomever needs to use them.

The next important question to ask is whether the servers are in a private cloud or a public cloud. This distinction was historically tied to where the servers are located, but more precisely, it reflects who uses the servers and how they use them.

What Is a Private Cloud?

If the servers are owned by and dedicated to only one organization (referred to as the user or tenant), they are in a private cloud. A private cloud can be built on-premises on hardware that you own and maintain at your location or hosted by a third party at a data center. The key defining factor is that the servers are not open to other users. The owner is responsible for the management and maintenance of the servers and planning for future capacity and performance to meet organizational needs. This planning usually involves long lead times to provision additional hardware and services (electricity, broadband, cooling, etc.) to meet the future demand.

What Is a Public Cloud?

In a public cloud, the servers are shared between multiple, unrelated tenants. A public cloud is off-site (or off-premises). Public clouds are typically owned by a vendor who sells access to servers that are co-located with many servers providing services to many users. Users contract with the vendor for the services they need. The user isn’t responsible for capital expenses (CapEx), and customers only have to pay for the resources they use as a recurring operating expense (OpEx) (see also, the difference between CapEx vs. OpEx). If their needs change, they can add or remove capacity quickly and easily by requesting changes from the vendor who reserves additional resources to meet demand from its clients.

Comparing Private Cloud to Public Cloud

To better understand private clouds and public clouds, let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of each offering. By the way, there is no reason for this to be an either/or decision. In their 2021 State of the Cloud Survey, Flexera found that 78% of respondents use a hybrid cloud approach, meaning they use both public and private clouds (more on that later).

Private Cloud Storage Advantages and Disadvantages

Like any kind of technology, there are pros and cons to using a private cloud. For industries with highly specialized needs like government and defense, using a private cloud can deliver a higher level of security and service. For companies outside these industries, using a private cloud may still make sense if you have data-intensive customers in highly security-conscious fields.

Advantages of a Private Cloud

• Security. Private clouds offer a high level of security as organizations can physically secure their servers and access data through private networks.
• Low latency. Data stored in an on-premises private cloud can be served quickly since resources are located closer to users, avoiding latency (i.e., delays in data transfer).

Disadvantages of a Private Cloud

• Limited scalability. You may have to accept scalability limitations. Increasing the capacity of a private cloud in a short amount of time may not be possible.
• Cost. Private cloud services typically have higher up-front costs than public cloud services.

Public Cloud Storage Advantages and Disadvantages

There are pros and cons to using a public cloud just as there are to using private cloud storage. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages can help you decide if a public cloud is right for you.

Public Cloud Storage Advantages

• Monthly payments. In contrast to building a data center, a public cloud storage service can offer a low monthly cost instead of a significant up-front expense.
• Fast setup. Further, most public cloud services are designed to be easy to start, though there are exceptions.
• Incentives. Public cloud providers are able to offer incentives like free trials and free tiers that make their service more appealing to users.
• Scalability and speed. Public cloud services offer significant scale and speed because they can spread the cost of their infrastructure across many customers.

Public Cloud Storage Disadvantages

• Latency. Fractions of a second may not matter to most organizations, but in some industries, even small amounts of latency in sending or retrieving data to and from the cloud can cause performance problems.
• Security limitations. Some companies, like defense contractors and banks, may require a higher level of security protection. Satisfying these security requirements is easier with a private cloud. Outside of a few industries with special requirements, public cloud service is often a good option.

Differences: Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud

Which Cloud Is Right For You?

If you’re a big company or organization with special computing needs, you know whether you need to keep your data in a private data center. For businesses in certain industries, for example, government or medical, the decision to host in a private or public cloud will be determined by regulation. These requirements could mandate the use of a private cloud, but there are more and more specialized off-premises clouds with the necessary security and management to support regulated industries.

A public cloud is the cloud of choice for those whose needs don’t yet include building a dedicated data center, or who like the flexibility, scalability, and cost of public cloud offerings. If the organization has a global reach, it also provides an easy way to connect with customers in diverse locations with minimal effort.

The growing number of vendors and variety of public cloud services indicate that the trend is definitely in favor of using a public cloud when possible. Even big customers are increasingly using a public cloud due to its undeniable advantages in rapid scaling, flexibility, and cost savings.

Enter: The Hybrid Cloud

Choosing a private or public cloud is not your only option—you can also use a hybrid cloud strategy. Hybrid cloud refers to the presence of multiple deployment types (public or private) with some form of integration or orchestration between them. An organization might choose the hybrid cloud to have the ability to rapidly expand its storage or computing when necessary for planned or unplanned spikes in demand, such as those that occur during holiday seasons for a retailer, or during a service outage at the primary data center.

There are several use cases where a hybrid cloud makes sense.

1. To maximize disaster recovery speed. For companies that value speed and reliability, a hybrid cloud is a good choice for storing backups and using them in a disaster recovery scenario. Specifically, the approach here is to have a “warm disaster recovery” service on standby in the event of a disaster and then switch over to it when needed.
2. To meet regulatory requirements. Some regulations require you to store data within a specific geographic footprint. A hybrid cloud is one way to meet these requirements.
3. For data-heavy workloads. A hybrid cloud model also suits companies or departments that work with high volumes of large files like media and entertainment. They can take advantage of high-speed, on-premises infrastructure to get fast access to large media files and store data that doesn’t need to be accessed as frequently—archives and backups, for example—with a scalable, low-cost public cloud provider.

For more guidance on the hybrid cloud, including how the hybrid cloud is different from a multi-cloud approach (in short: using two public clouds in combination), see our post: “What’s the Diff: Hybrid Cloud vs. Multi-cloud.”

Choose the Best Cloud Model for Your Needs

For most businesses and organizations, the important factors in selecting a cloud will be cost, accessibility, reliability, and scalability. Whether a private or public cloud, or some combination, offers the best solution for your needs will depend on your type of business, regulations, budget, and future plans. The good news is that there are a wide variety of choices to meet just about any use case or budget.

We’d love to hear your approach to choosing cloud storage services. What is your preferred use case for a private cloud vs. a public cloud? Let us know in the comments.

The post What’s the Diff: Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

We came across Kevin Soltow’s blog, VMWare Blog, and invited him to contribute a post on a topic that’s getting a lot of attention these days: using multiple public clouds for storing data to increase data redundancy and also to save money. We hope you enjoy the post.

Kevin lives in Zumikon, Switzerland where he works as a Storage Consultant specializing in VMware technologies and storage virtualization. He gradudated from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and now works on implementing disaster recovery and virtual SAN solutions.

Nowadays, it’s hard to find a company without a backup or DR strategy in place. An organization’s data has become one of its most important assets, so making sure it remains safe and available are key priorities. But does it really matter where your backups are stored? If you follow the “3-2-1” backup rule, you know the answer. You should have at least three copies of your data, two of which are local but on different media, and at least one copy is offsite. That all sounds reasonable.

What about the devices to store your backup data?

Tapes — Tapes were first, had large capacity, the ability to keep data for a long time, but unfortunately they were slow. Historically, they have been less expensive than disks.

Disks — Disks have great capacity, are more durable and faster than tapes, and are improving rapidly in capacity, speed, and cost-per-unit-stored.

In a previous post, Looking for the most affordable cloud storage? AWS vs Azure vs Backblaze B2, I looked at the cost of public cloud storage. With reasonably-priced cloud services available, cloud can be that perfect offsite option for keeping your data safe.

No cloud storage provider can guarantee 100% accessibility and security. Sure, they get close to this number, with claims of 99-point-something availability, but an unexpected power outage or disaster could knock out their services for minutes, hours, or longer. This happened last year to Amazon S3 when the service suffered from a service disruption. This year, S3 was down due to a power outage. Fortunately, Amazon did not lose their customers’ data. The key words in the 3-2-1 backup rule are at least one copy offsite. More is always better.

Keeping data in multiple clouds provides a clear advantage for reliability, but it also can provide a cost savings, as well. Using multiple cloud providers can simultaneously provide geographically dispersed backups while taking advantage of the lower storage costs available from competitively-priced cloud providers.

In this post, we take a closer look at solutions that support multiple public clouds and allow you to keep several backup copies in different and dispersed clouds.

The Backup Process

The backup process is illustrated in the figure below:

Some solutions create backups and move them to the repository. Data is kept there for a while and then shifted to the cloud where it stays as long as needed.

In this post, I discuss the dedicated software serving as a “data router,” in other words, the software involved in the process of moving data from some local repository to one or more public clouds.

Let’s have a look at the options we have to achieve this.

1 — Rclone

When I considered solutions that let you back up your data to several clouds, Rclone and MSP360 (formerly CloudBerry Lab) were the first solutions that popped into my head. Rclone acts as a data mover synchronizing your local repository with cloud-based object storage. You basically create a backup using something else (e.g. Veeam Backup & Replication), allocate it on-premises, and the solution sends it to several clouds. First developed for Linux, Rclone has a command-line interface to sync files and directories between clouds.

OS Compatibility

The solution can be run on all OS’s using the command-line interface.

Cloud Support

The solution works with most popular public cloud storage platforms, such as Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3 and Glacier, Google Cloud Platform, etc.

Feature set

Rclone commands work wonderfully on whatever remote storage system, be it public cloud storage or just your backup server located somewhere else. It also can send data to multiple places simultaneously, but bi-directional sync does not work yet. In other words, changes you make to your files in the cloud do not affect their local copies. The synchronization process is incremental on the file-by-file basis. It should also be noted that Rclone preserves timestamps on files, which helps when searching for the right backup.

This solution provides two options for moving data to the cloud: sync and copy. The first one, sync, allows moving the backups to the cloud automatically as soon as they appear in the specified local directory. The second mode, copy, as expected from its name, allows only copying data from on-premises to the cloud. Deleting your files locally won’t affect the ones stored in the cloud. There’s also an option to verify hash equality.

Learn more about Rclone: https://rclone.org/

2 — MSP360 Backup

MSP360 Backup is built from the self-titled backup technology developed for service providers and enterprise IT departments. It is a cross-platform solution. Note that it’s full-fledged backup software, allowing you to not only move backups to the cloud but also create them.

OS compatibility

MSP360 is a cross-platform solution.

Cloud Support

So far, the solution can talk to Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3 and Glacier, Google Cloud Platform, and more.

Feature set

Designed for large IT departments and managed service providers, MSP360 Backup provides some features that make the solution really handy for the big guys. It offers the opportunity for client customization up to and including the complete rebranding of the solution.

Let’s look at the backup side of this thing. The solution allows backing up files and directories manually. If you prefer, you can sync the selected directory to the root of the bucket. MSP360 Backup also can schedule backups. Now, you won’t miss them! Another cool thing is backup jobs management and monitoring. Thanks to this feature you are always aware of backup processes on the client machines.

The solution offers AES 256-bit end-to-end encryption to ensure your data safety.

Learn more about MSP360 Backup: https://www.cloudberrylab.com/managed-backup.aspx

Read Backblaze’s blog post, “How to Back Up Your NAS With Backblaze B2 and MSP360.”

3 — StarWind VTL

Some organizations still use Virtual Tape Library (VTL), but want to sync their tape objects to the cloud as well.

OS compatibility

This product is available only for Windows.

Cloud Support

So far, StarWind VTL can talk to popular cloud storage platforms like Backblaze B2, AWS S3 and Glacier, and Microsoft Azure.

Feature set

The product has many features for anyone who wants to back up to the cloud. First, it allows sending data to the cloud’s respective tier with their subsequent automatic de-staging. This automation makes StarWind VTL really cool. Second, the product supports both on-premises and public cloud object storage. Third, StarWind VTL supports deduplication and compression, making storage utilization more efficient. This solution also allows client-side encryption.

StarWind supports standard “LTO” (Linear Tape-Open) protocols. This appeals to organizations that have LTO in place since it allows adoption of more scalable, cost efficient cloud storage without having to update the internal backup infrastructure.

All operations in the StarWind VTL environment are done via the Management Console and Web-Console, the web-interface that makes VTL compatible with all browsers.

Learn more about StarWind Virtual Tape Library: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-tape-library

Also, see Backblaze’s post on StarWind VTL: Connect Veeam to the B2 Cloud: Episode 2 — Using StarWind VTL

4 — Duplicati

Duplicati is designed for online backups from scratch. It also can send your data directly to multiple clouds or use local storage as a backend.

OS compatibility

It is free and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Cloud Support

So far, the solution talks to Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Mega, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure.

Feature set

Duplicati has some awesome features. First, the solution is free. Notably, its team does not restrict using this software for free even for commercial purposes. Second, Duplicati employs decent encryption, compression, and deduplication, making your storage more efficient and safe. Third, the solution adds timestamps to your files, so you can easily find the specific backup. Fourth, the backup scheduler helps make users’ lives simpler. Now, you won’t miss the backup time!

What makes this piece of software special and really handy is backup content verification. Indeed, you never know whether the backup works out until you literally back up from it. Thanks to this feature, you can pinpoint any problems before it is too late.

Duplicati is managed via a web interface, making it possible to access from anywhere and any platform.

Learn more about Duplicati: https://www.duplicati.com/.

Read Backblaze’s post on Duplicati: Duplicati, a Free, Cross-Platform Client for B2 Cloud Storage.

5 — Duplicacy

Duplicacy supports popular public cloud storage services. Apart from the cloud, it can use SFTP servers and NAS boxes as backends.

OS compatibility

The solution is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Cloud Support

Duplicacy can offload data to Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure, and more.

Feature set

Duplicacy not only routes your backups to the cloud but also creates them. Note that each backup created by this solution is incremental. Each of them is treated as a full snapshot, allowing simpler restoration, deletion, and backup transition between storage sites. Duplicacy sends your files to multiple cloud storages and uses strong client-side encryption. Another cool thing about this solution is its ability to provide multiple clients with simultaneous access to the same storage.

Duplicacy has a comprehensive GUI that features one-page configuration for quick backup scheduling and managing retention policies. If you are a command-line interface fan, you can manage Duplicacy via the command line.

Learn more about Duplicacy: https://duplicacy.com/

Read Backblaze’s Knowledge Base article, How to upload files to B2 with Duplicacy.

So, Should You Store Your Data in More Than One Cloud?

Undoubtedly, keeping a copy of your data in the public cloud is a great idea and enables you to comply with the 3-2-1 backup rule. By going beyond that and adopting a multi-cloud strategy, it is possible to save money and also gain additional data redundancy and security by having data in more than one public cloud service.

As I’ve covered in this post, there are a number of wonderful backup solutions that can talk to multiple public cloud storage services. I hope this article proves useful to you and you’ll consider employing one of the reviewed solutions in your backup infrastructure.

— Kevin Soltow

The post Five Cool Multi-cloud Backup Solutions You Should Consider appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

“Hybrid cloud” has jumped into the IT vernacular over the last few years. Hybrid cloud solutions intelligently divide processing and data storage between on-premises and off-premises resources to maximize efficiency. Businesses seamlessly extend their data processing and data storage capabilities to the cloud enabling them to manage unusual or fluctuating demands for services. More recently, businesses are utilizing cloud computing and storage resources for their day to day operations instead of building out their own infrastructure.

Companies in the media and entertainment industry are candidates for considering the hybrid cloud as on any given day these organizations ingest and process large amounts of data in the form of video and audio files. Effectively processing and storing this data is paramount in managing the cost of a project and keeping it on schedule. Below we’ll examine the data storage aspects of the hybrid cloud when considering such a solution for a media and entertainment organization.

The Classic Storage Environment

In the media and entertainment industry, much of the video and audio collected is either never used or reviewed once and then archived. A rough estimate is that 10% of all the audio and video collected is used in the various drafts produced. That means that 90% of the data is archived: stored on the local storage systems or perhaps saved off to tape. This archived data can not be deleted until the project owner agrees, an event that can take months and sometimes years.

Using local storage to keep this archived data means you have to “overbuy” your on-premises storage to accommodate the maximum amount of data you might ever need to hold. While this allows the data to be easily accessed and restored, you have to purchase or lease substantially more storage than you really need.

As a consequence, many organizations decided to use tape storage for their archived data to reduce the need for on-premises data storage. They soon discovered the hidden costs of tape systems: ongoing tape maintenance, supply costs, and continuing personnel expenses. In addition, to recover an archived video or audio file from tape was often slow, cumbersome, and fraught with error.

Hybrid Cloud Storage

Cantemo’s Media Asset Management Portal can identify and automatically route video and audio data to a storage destination—on-premises, cloud, tape, etc.—as needed. Let’s consider a model where 20% of the data ingested is needed for the duration of a given project. The remaining 80% is evaluated and then determined that it can be archived, although we might need to access a video or audio clip at a later time. What is the best destination for the Cantemo Portal to route video and audio that optimizes both cost and access? Let’s review each of our choices: on-premises disk, tape, and cloud storage.

Data Destinations

To compare the three solutions, we’ve considered the cost of each system over a five year period for: initial purchase cost, ongoing costs and supplies, maintenance costs, personnel cost for operations, and subscription costs.

• On-Premises Disk Storage: On-premises storage can range from a 1PB network attached storage (NAS) system to a multi-petabyte storage area network (SAN). The cost ranges from $12/terabyte/month to $20/terabyte/month (or more). These figures assume new equipment at “street” prices where available. These systems are used for instant access to the data over a high speed network connection. The data, or a proxy, can be altered multiple times and versioning is required.
• Tape Storage: Typically these are linear tape-open (LTO) systems with a minimum of two local tape systems, operational costs, etc. The data is stored, typically in batch mode, and accessed infrequently. The tapes can be stored on-site or off-site. Off-site storage costs more. The cost for LTO tape ranges from $7/terabyte/month to $10/terabyte/month, with much of that being the ongoing operational costs. The design includes one incremental tape per day, two week retention, first week on-site, second week off-site, with weekly pickup/drop-off. Also included are weekly, monthly, and yearly full backups, rotated on/off-site as needed for tape testing, data recovery, etc.
• Cloud Storage: The cost of cloud storage has come down over the last few years and currently ranges from $5/terabyte/month to $25/terabyte/month for storage depending on the vendor. Video and audio stored in cloud storage is typically easy to locate and readily available for recovery if needed. In most cases, there are minimal operational costs as, for example, the Cantemo Portal software is designed to locate and recover files that are required, but not present on the on-premises storage system.

Of course, a given organization will have their own costs, but in general they should fall within the ranges noted above.

Comparing Storage Costs

In comparing costs of the different methods noted above, we’ll present three scenarios. For each scenario we’ll use data storage amounts of 100TB, 1PB, and 2PB. Each table is the same format, all we’ve done is change how the data is distributed: on-premises, tape, or cloud. The math can be adapted for any set of numbers you wish to use.

SCENARIO 1: 100% of data is in on-premises storage.

SCENARIO 2: 20% of data is in on-premises storage and 80% of data is on LTO Tape.

Using tape to store 80% of the data can reduce the cost 33% over just using on-premises data storage.

SCENARIO 3: 20% of data is in on-premises storage and 80% of data is in cloud storage.

Storing 80% of the data in the cloud can lead a 46% savings on the low end, but could actually be more expensive depending on the vendor selected.

Separate the Costs

Often, cloud storage costs are combined with cloud computing costs in the hybrid cloud model, thus hiding the true cost of the cloud storage, perhaps, until it’s too late. The savings gained by using cloud computing services a few times a day may be completely offset by the high cost of cloud storage, which you would be using the entire time. Here are some recommendations.

1. Ask to have your hybrid cloud costs broken out into computing and storage costs, it should be clear what you are paying for each service.
2. Consider moving the cloud data storage cost to a low cost provider such as Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, which charges only $5/terabyte/month for cloud storage. This is particularly useful for archived data that still needs to be accessible as Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is readily available.
3. If compute, data distribution, and data archiving services are required, the Cantemo Portal allows you to designate different cloud storage vendors depending on the usage. For example, data requiring computing services can be stored with Amazon S3 and data designated for archiving can be stored in Backblaze. This allows you optimize access, while minimizing costs.

Considering Hybrid Data Storage?

Today, most companies in the media and entertainment industry have large amounts of data. The hybrid cloud has the potential to change how the industry does business by moving to cloud-based platforms that allow for global collaboration around the clock. In these scenarios, the amount of data created and stored will be staggering, even by today’s standards. As a consequence, it will be paramount for you to know the most cost efficient way to store and access your data.

The latest version of Cantemo Portal includes native integration to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, making it easy to create custom rules for archiving to the cloud and access archived files when needed.

(Author’s note: I used on-premises throughout this post as it is the common vernacular used in the tech industry. Apologies to those grammatically offended.)

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