Multicloud storage is an approach to configuring multiple cloud storage services as a single architecture, which benefits business goals by diversifying and balancing the properties of different cloud deployments to create more effective and efficient systems. A common use case is to ensure cloud deployments are shared among geographically diverse data centers within the same region to achieve regionally redundant services. This could mean two data centers positioned on opposite US coasts servicing a multicloud architecture could provide service redundancy against outages on either coast. While this example demonstrates a common use case, geographic diversity, cloud service architecture is flexible, and multicloud provides a channel for developers to hobble together multiple services in innovative ways to achieve business goals, meet compliance, ensure data protection, and prepare for disaster and recovery.
Functionally, multicloud storage combines multiple native public cloud service providers (CSP) with potentially other private clouds, on-premise architectures, or managed service providers (MSP). Multicloud is complex enough to warrant using third-party software to coordinate services. These platforms bundle toolsets that allow for comprehensive monitoring and control of several cloud services into a unified architecture. These platforms have various capabilities, but are all challenged with:
The cloud and cloud storage are essentially synonymous. So, while on-premise storage means data storage housed and managed at a company’s physical location, storing data “in the cloud” fundamentally is the same as storing it at an off-site data center accessible by internet. The off-site cloud storage is most typically a third-party cloud service provider that could offer both managed and self-service features.
Managed features allows companies to out-source their IT needs to cloud providers, effectively reducing that departmental functionality to a budget line item. Highly visible examples of these services are SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) vendors, who manage the entire back-end and user interface for clients that simply pay for the service and may never even think twice about security, or data management. Likewise, IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) provides infrastructure, like servers, CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, network, under managed and self-service models.
Self-service models, or unmanaged models, are bare services that provide intrepid developers the basics for installing and self-managing their own environments. Self-management infrastructure and services are good for consumers who have the expertise, or require custom configurations. This approach will undeniably reduce CSP costs, but is offset with zero management or software support.
Cloud storage has many properties that make it a flexible solution that has become a source of innovation and advantage for many organizations. Utilizing cloud storage has allowed companies to easily comply with regulations and secure their data assets, as well as ensure they are adequately protected in the case of data disasters and loss. Developers can easily move in and out of environments as they experiment with workloads, as readily as enterprises can scale their data stores to meet the demand of their users.
Multicloud storage can be successfully implemented using a cloud management platform (CMP). CMPs provide the toolsets to monitor and control multiple cloud services and resources. These platforms unify cloud metrics across multiple environments—private cloud, public cloud, multicloud, hybrid cloud—to create visibility across environments and deliver insights about performance, security, and costs. These insights help many roles, IT admins, security analysis, and engineers, to effectively optimize cloud resources.
Multicloud management platforms, or sometimes cloud data controllers, tackle the fundamental problems of having multiple clouds—data must be migrated between clouds. The basic issue is that data is heavy compared to the compute power also found at data centers. Compute power can be engaged, or “spun up”, on-demand, whereas, if a replication of data is needed to help meet demand, it must first be copied, or transferred, from a source. Depending on the size of the data, this could take a significant amount of time. In other words, data needs to be positioned strategically in advance.
The cloud data controller provides the capabilities for organizations to move their data from on-premise data storage to cloud data storage. The controller creates a single global file system that encompasses both on-premise and object storage and cloud storage.
Cloud management platforms, or cloud data controllers, provide a global view of cloud resources, with controls to manage data between clouds. Generally, these applications are standalone solutions that create a namespace that spans both on-premise, and cloud resources, with features for automation and orchestration of data tasks, that help to maintain data integrity, protection, and security, for each data storage environment.
The overarching benefit of multicloud storage is diversification of storage over multiple deployments, leading to the following subsequent advantages.
Multicloud platforms are designed to remove many of the obstacles to configuring, monitoring, and managing multiple cloud storage services together. Common challenges include:
There are many vendors in the multicloud storage management space, and each of their products have several advantages and drawbacks. Multicloud storage management platforms come in three main varieties. Based on the strengths of the admin team, and the need of business application, organizations can choose between vendor specific, vendor agnostic, and open-source solutions.
Vendor specific multicloud platforms pair tightly with their ecosystem, for example, Microsoft Azure Management Tool integrates closely with the Microsoft ecosystem. Ease and familiarity with incumbent systems can make multicloud adoption smoother and faster.
Vendor agnostic platforms, like Cisco’s Workload Optimizer Manager, promises to integrate across multiple vendor systems. Cisco has penned many de facto networking standards, and is a powerhouse with the right equipment to support larger enterprise clients, but reasonably it could come with a steep price tag.
Not so with open-source platforms, like Redhat or Apache, which offer competitive multicloud management features but without the same licensing costs. While open source software is free, some enterprise releases require support payments. Non-monetary costs, like learning the open-source platform or troubleshooting open-source issues, show up in the time it takes to research an answer from the open-source community rather than a support hotline.
Multicloud storage provides strategic business benefits in several use cases that aim to enhance and bolster data protection, security, flexibility, performance, accessibility, and resilience. In short, cases using multicloud aim to ensure users have access to their data, anywhere, anytime, with minimal lag, delivered to them securely.