But what are the differences and what makes Object storage to suit the data explosion better than the former concepts? To understand the benefits Object storage is offering, one has to first look at the older concepts of File storage and Block storage since they differ greatly. On a NAS system, it exposes its storage as a network file system. When devices are attached to a NAS Network Attached Storage system a mountable file system is displayed and users can access their files with proper access rights.
Because of that a NAS system has to manage user privileges, file locking and other security measures so several users can access files. As with any server or storage solution a file system is responsible for positioning the files in the NAS.
This works very well for hundreds of thousands or even millions of files, but not for billions. Block storage works in a similar way, but unlike file storage where the data is managed on the file level, data is stored in data blocks.
Several blocks for example in a SAN system build a file. The storage application decides then were the data blocks are stored inside the system and on what specific disk or storage medium. How the blocks are combined in the end and how to access them decides the storage application. Blocks in a SAN do not have metadata that are related to the storage system or application. In other words: Blocks are data segments without description, association and without an owner to the storage solution.
Everything is handled and controlled by the SAN software. Because of that SAN and Block storage is often used for performance hungry applications like data bases or for transactions because the data can be accessed, modified and saved.
And then, when data is requested, the underlying storage software reassembles the blocks of data from these environments and presents them back to the user. It is usually deployed in storage-area network SAN environments and must be tied to a functioning server.
Each block lives on its own and can be partitioned so it can be accessed in a different operating system, which gives the user complete freedom to configure their data. There are some downsides, though. Block storage can be expensive.
It has limited capability to handle metadata, which means it needs to be dealt with in the application or database level—adding another thing for a developer or systems administrator to worry about.
Object storage, also known as object-based storage, is a flat structure in which files are broken into pieces and spread out among hardware. In object storage, the data is broken into discrete units called objects and is kept in a single repository, instead of being kept as files in folders or as blocks on servers.
Object storage volumes work as modular units: each is a self-contained repository that owns the data, a unique identifier that allows the object to be found over a distributed system, and the metadata that describes the data.
Object storage metadata can also be extremely detailed, and is capable of storing information on where a video was shot, what camera was used, and what actors are featured in each frame. To retrieve the data, the storage operating system uses the metadata and identifiers, which distributes the load better and lets administrators apply policies that perform more robust searches.
Object storage is cost efficient: you only pay for what you use. It can scale easily, making it a great choice for public cloud storage. The objects have enough information for an application to find the data quickly and are good at storing unstructured data.
Object store use cases include applications that need data to be highly available and highly durable, such as streaming videos, serving images and documents, and websites. It is also used for storing large amounts of data for use cases such as genomics and data analytics. You can also use it for storing backups and archives for compliance with regulatory requirements.
Or, use it to replace old physical tape records and move them over to cloud storage. It is also widely used for disaster recovery because it takes practically no time to switch to a backup bucket to recover from a disaster.
Nearline for data access less than once a month access 3. Coldline for data accessed roughly less than once a quarter 4. It costs a bit more to use standard storage because it allows for automatic redundancy and frequent access options. They are integrated with Compute Engine virtual machines and Kubernetes Engine. With block storage, files are split into evenly sized blocks of data, each with its own address but with no additional information metadata to provide more context for what that block of data is.
Block storage can be directly accessed by the operating system as a mounted drive volume. Benefit from increased data availability, application responsiveness, and improved storage efficiency. Explore SANsymphony. Explore vFilO. Explore Swarm Object Storage Object-based software-defined storage that radically simplifies the ability to manage, store, and protect data while providing access to any application, device, or end-user.
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