Below is a list of common questions about the technology of cloud storage.
Is cloud storage for storing any kind of data? No. cloud storage is designed for storing file, not block data. Cloud storage is not a SAN.
Is cloud storage good for databases? No. If you are maintaining a database that drives your enterprise revenue stream, cloud storage is not a solution for you, and you should be looking at SAN solutions.
What kinds of data is cloud storage best at storing? Cloud storage is especially great for storing large files (Web2.0 rich media, video surveillance data, large genomic data files, etc.). Both read and write performance is highly scalable and aggregate I/O scales linearly with number of nodes.
What use-cases are not a fit for cloud storage? Cloud storage is less of a fit when considering the workloads handled by classical primary NAS storage. If you are looking for a few 10s of TBs of primary NAS storage (i.e. transactional NAS) for active data you should be considering NetApp, HP, IBM, etc. Cloud storage is also not suitable for storage tied to high performance computing use-cases. If you are looking for blazing single-file write throughput to multiple clients as seen in animation applications, CAD/CAM etc., there are many solutions to choose from. For these applications you should be looking at NetApp GX/Spinnaker, HP-Polyserve, Panasas, BlueArc, iBrix, and open source clustering options amongst others.
Other Resources to Consider If you are looking for an introduction and overview of cloud storage, visit the What is Cloud Storage section of the library.
For white papers and audio / video guides to ParaScale, visit the ParaScale Cloud Storage section of the library.
If you are ready to download a trial of ParaScale, visit the Evaluating ParaScale section of the library.
For details on ParaScale features, visit the products pages.
For information on ParaScale solutions, visit the solutions pages.
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