Cloud tiering is the new standard for storing data and it’s now being used by enterprises to be more efficient in terms of cloud storage. Cloud tiering also comes with a ton of benefits for businesses that are looking for better ROI in their storage spend. Furthermore, it also aids in accelerating their cloud data migrations.
Table of Contents
What is Cloud Tiering?
In the world of data storage, cloud tiering refers to the ability to move file data from enterprise storage to cloud storage while maintaining access for users and applications. The primary drive is to reduce the space consumed on expensive storage and take advantage of low-cost cloud storage solutions. Additionally, this can also help improve storage performance and reduce backup costs while making it easier to recover in the event of a disaster.
How Cloud Tiering Can Serve Your Business
There are a couple of ways that cloud tiering is serving businesses from across various industries but some of the most noteworthy benefits of cloud tiering include:
1. Cloud tiering saves costs on primary storage
The ability to off load infrequently accessed data to cloud storage can result in dramatic savings as compared to continuing to buy Enterprise on-premises storage. Cloud tiering has the ability to right place data leads to better storage utilization since typically, up to 70% of data is cold or seldom accessed which makes it an excellent candidate for cloud tiering.
2. Cloud tiering saves costs on backup
By choosing durable cloud storage to move cold data off of enterprise storage, you reduce the amount of data that must be backed up. Your cold / tiered data is now protected via immutable cloud storage and your hot data is protected by your backup application.
This setup has several advantages:
- Shrinks time to complete backups. By backing up only hot data, your backup application has less work to do. In many cases, customers find the complete backups in the designated backup window.
- Reduces backup costs. If you backup vendor charges by TB of the data protected, it then reduces the data footprint thereby cutting down license costs.
3. Cloud tiering makes ransomware and disaster recovery easier and faster
Disaster recovery is the process of recovering your data and IT systems after a disaster or major outage. The most common cause of major outage today is a ransomware attack. Good thing, cloud tiering can move data to immutable cloud storage mining.
Now, disaster recovery planning involves several steps: defining the scope of protection, identifying critical systems and data, designing a backup strategy, identifying suitable facilities for off-site storage, developing an off-site storage plan, and evaluating third-party services.
The good news is that cloud tiering can be used as a part of this process to help restore files and data in the event of a natural disaster or another emergency that causes downtime at your primary site. When used with other cloud technologies like software as a service (SaaS), cloud tiering allows you to recover files quickly without having to bring them back up on-premises first – saving you time and money when you need it most!
4. Cloud tiering can improve performance
Typical enterprise storage systems performance will degrade as they approach maximum capacity. In contrast, cloud tiering can offload data to increase free space to optimal levels. Additionally, if your cloud tiering solution supports native file formats, “read intensive” workloads can be performed directly on the cloud storage container or bucket to further reduce workload on the primary storage.
Conclusion
Cloud tiering can help you achieve all of these benefits, but only if it is done right. When done properly, cloud tiering can provide massive benefits for businesses at very little cost.
If your business has a large volume of data that needs to be backed up regularly, then it is worth considering using the public cloud as a backup solution. This method is much more efficient than traditional methods because it gives businesses access to a wide range of resources that they might not otherwise have been able to afford or manage effectively on their own.
Are you an MSP? Download our free MSP Marketing Plan →
Although it can be confusing to sort through all the options and terminologies, we wanted to offer you some concise information on this topic to help you understand what cloud tiering is and how it can serve your business. Whether you’re looking to improve your data storage efficiency, reduce costs associated with maintaining infrastructure and equipment, or you simply want more flexibility in where your data lives within an organization—cloud tiering has a solution for it.
