When it comes to digital storage, individuals and businesses have more options now than ever before. With the exponential growth of digital data, having the right storage solution is critical for protecting information and ensuring it is accessible when needed. There are a variety of factors to consider when choosing a storage option, including accessibility, security, cost, scalability and more. This article will provide an overview of the popular storage solutions available and key criteria to evaluate when selecting the right fit.
Local Storage
Local storage refers to storage devices that are physically attached to a computer or device. This includes internal and external hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs).
Internal Storage
Internal or built-in storage refers to HDDs, SSDs, and other media that are built into a computer. For desktop computers, internal storage consists of the hard drives installed in the computer chassis. For laptops and mobile devices, the internal storage is soldered or slotted into the motherboard. Some key advantages of internal storage are:
- Faster access speeds because of direct connectivity via SATA or PCIe interfaces
- Improved security since drives aren’t removable
- Less prone to physical damage compared to external drives
However, there are some downsides to rely solely on internal storage:
- Limited capacity compared to external storage solutions
- No portability – data is tied to the device
- Difficult to share large amounts of data between devices
Internal storage is ideal for hosting the operating system and applications. For personal computers, capacities typically range from 256GB to 4TB for HDDs and 128GB to 2TB for SSDs. Even higher capacities are supported for enterprise servers and networked storage.
External Storage
External storage refers to storage media that can be plugged into a computer via USB, eSATA, Thunderbolt, or other ports. Popular external storage options include:
- External HDDs – Offer large capacities from 1TB up to 10TB+ along with affordability, but are slower than SSDs.
- External SSDs – Provide faster read/write speeds and ruggedness with capacities from 500GB up to 8TB.
- Flash drives – Small form factor and lightweight for easy transport with capacities from 16GB up to 2TB.
- Optical discs – CDs (700MB), DVDs (4.7GB), and Blu-Ray discs (25GB) offer a very inexpensive storage medium for data archiving, distribution and backup.
The main benefits of external storage are:
- Portability to transport or share data
- Ability to expand storage capacity
- Flexibility to use storage across different devices via plugging in
- Added data security and backup capabilities
The downsides include slower access speeds compared to internal storage, potential for damage if devices are dropped or mishandled, and the need for cables and connections.
Cloud Storage
Cloud storage refers to online storage accessed over the internet via service providers. Some top cloud storage platforms include:
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Microsoft OneDrive
- Apple iCloud
- Amazon S3
- Box
These providers offer consumers, businesses, and enterprises highly scalable and flexible storage along with collaborative features for sharing and syncing data across locations and devices. Here are some key benefits of cloud storage:
- Accessibility from anywhere with an internet connection
- Integration across devices and operating systems
- Easy collaboration and sharing capabilities
- Reliability against data loss via redundancy and automatic backups
- Scalability to accommodate growing storage needs
Potential downsides include recurring subscription fees, reliance on internet connectivity for access, potential security and privacy risks depending on the provider, and slower performance compared to local storage for very large files.
Personal Cloud Storage
For individuals and small teams, most major cloud providers offer free tiers from 5GB up to 15GB along with affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. These range from $1 – $10 per month for 100GB to 2TB+ of storage.
Popular uses for personal cloud storage include:
- Storing personal photos, videos, documents securely online
- Automatically syncing files across desktop, laptops, tablets and phones
- Backing up important files for redundancy
- Enabling convenient content sharing with friends, family and colleagues
Business and Enterprise Cloud Storage
For businesses, cloud platforms like Dropbox, Box and Google Drive offer robust collaboration tools including permissions, version history and integrations with common productivity software. Plans range from around $5 per user per month for 1TB up to $20 per user for unlimited storage.
At the enterprise level, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Storage offer massive scalable storage for big data and mission critical workloads. Along with petabyte-scale capacity, these enterprise services provide:
- High availability across global fault-tolerant data centers
- Military-grade encryption and access controls
- Snapshots, backups and data replication for disaster recovery
- Support forLambda, Kubernetes,Spark and other frameworks
- Integrations with on-prem infrastructure, VPNs, etc.
While more complex to implement, the unlimited storage, reliability, security and ecosystem support make public cloud storage ideal for large organizations.
Network Attached Storage (NAS)
Network attached storage (NAS) refers to dedicated file storage devices connected to a local area network. This allows multiple devices and users on the network to easily access, store and share data on the NAS. Advantages of NAS include:
- Centralized storage accessible from different devices
- Easy setup and management
- Shared access for collaboration
- Snapshots and backups built-in
- Ability to scale up storage capacity
NAS solutions are available for home networks with 1-2 bays and capacities up to 16TB, all the way up to enterprise-grade systems with 100s of bays and petabyte-scale capacity. Leading consumer vendors include Synology, QNAP, WD and Asustor. Major enterprise options include NetApp and Dell EMC.
Types of NAS Storage
There are two main storage architectures used in NAS devices:
Traditional HDD NAS
Uses magnetic hard disk drives (HDDs) for lower cost per TB, but slower access speeds.
Flash-Based SSD NAS
Uses flash solid state drives (SSDs) for faster throughput, lower latency and higher performance.
Many NAS systems support both HDDs and SSDs in a tiered configuration, with frequently accessed “hot” data stored on SSDs while “cold” archival data goes on HDDs. Enterprise NAS also commonly relies on a distributed file system with scale-out clustering to grow into petabyte-scale capacities while maintaining performance.
NAS vs DAS
Direct attached storage (DAS) consists of external storage drives hooked up directly to a computer or server, rather than via a network. DAS options include eSATA, USB, SAS and Thunderbolt connected drives. The main advantage of DAS over NAS is faster performance, while downsides include lack of shareability and limited scalability. NAS provides networked shareability and greater capacity that a single DAS array.
| Comparison | DAS | NAS |
|---|---|---|
| Access method | Directly attached to single server | Accessed over network |
| Performance | Very fast | Slower than DAS |
| Scalability | Limited by server capacity | Shareable, scale-out capacity |
| Cost | Lower for same capacity | Higher cost for hardware |
While DAS is faster, NAS provides shared storage and is easier to scale. Many organizations use a tiered approach with DAS for performance-critical workloads and NAS/cloud storage for collaboration and archiving.
Storage Area Networks (SANs)
Storage area networks (SANs) are dedicated high-speed networks used to connect servers and shared pools of storage devices. SANs are commonly deployed in enterprise IT environments to enable very large amounts of consolidated data storage that can be accessed by multiple servers. Within a SAN, storage devices appear as locally attached drives to connected servers.
There are two main SAN architectures:
Fibre Channel SAN
Uses Fibre Channel switches, adapters and cabling for high speed connectivity and data transfer. Provides reliable lossless transport and works over long distances, but the specialized hardware increases costs.
iSCSI SAN
Uses Ethernet and TCP/IP over standard network hardware and cabling. Lowers costs but distances are limited compared to Fibre Channel. Performance can also be impacted by network congestion.
Leading SAN vendors include Dell EMC, NetApp, Hitachi Vantara, HPE and IBM. SAN storage capacities scale into the petabytes with enterprise data services like replication, data deduplication, and snapshots. Benefits of deploying a SAN include:
- Centralized pools of storage with terabyte/petabyte capacity
- Ability to allocate and reallocate storage on demand
- Shared block-based storage across different servers
- High performance and low latency connectivity
- Redundancy and availability
- Data replication and backup
While offering vast consolidated storage, SANs have high upfront costs and complexity. They are predominantly used by large organizations and cloud/web service providers.
Object Storage
Object storage is a data storage architecture that manages data as objects compared to other architectures like file or block storage. Each object includes the data itself, metadata, and a globally unique identifier. Object storage is ideal for storing unstructured data like images, videos, log files, backups, archives and more.
Some key characteristics and benefits of object storage include:
- Scalability – Object storage systems scale into exabytes of capacity by distributing data across servers.
- Durability – Objects are redundantly distributed across servers and data centers to protect against hardware failures.
- Availability – Objects can be accessed over HTTP from anywhere with low latency.
- Cost effectiveness – Commodity hardware can be leveraged versus expensive SANs or NAS.
- Metadata tagging – Detailed metadata enables richer searching and automation.
Major cloud providers like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud offer cloud-based object storage services. On-premises options also exist from vendors like Quantum, Cloudian, Scality, and IBM.
Use Cases
Here are some popular use cases for object storage:
- Content repositories – Store, manage and distribute images, videos, documents
- Backup and archives – Long term retention for compliance
- Big data analytics – Cheap storage for vast amounts of unstructured data
- Software development – Store build artifacts, logs, dependencies
Choosing Storage Solutions
With the wide range of storage options available, from local to cloud to networked storage, how do you determine what solutions are right for your needs? Here are some key criteria to evaluate when selecting storage:
- Performance – Speed of reads/writes, ability to handle high workloads
- Capacity – Current storage needs and room for growth
- Availability – Uptime and data durability guarantees
- Accessibility – Ability to access data when and where needed
- Security – Data encryption, access controls, activity logging
- Costs – Upfront hardware costs, ongoing fees, operational overhead
- Complexity – Ease of deployment, management and use
- Scalability – Ability to easily add capacity
- Backup – Snapshots, replication capabilities
By weighing needs against these criteria, both businesses and individuals can identify the ideal storage platforms for their unique requirements and budget.
Conclusion
There are a wide variety of options to meet diverse storage needs ranging from portable external drives to enterprise SANs. Key considerations include required performance, capacity, accessibility, costs and capabilities. For most personal use, local external drives and cloud services fit the bill. Businesses have more complex storage needs but solutions like NAS, SAN and object storage are designed to deliver robust data services while scaling to accommodate growth. With data volumes continuing to surge, having the right storage infrastructure is essential for supporting both access and long term retention of all this digital information.