While a low starting price seems like a great way to minimize the TCO of cloud storage, the total cost of using the cloud will increase dramatically if the storage software does not efficiently use cloud resources. The problem is that once you realize just how much cloud storage is going to cost you, the cost of exiting the cloud may be even more prohibitive. As we will discuss in our webinar, “Reduce Cloud Storage TCO for a More Effective Cloud Strategy,” TCO reduction, both on-premises and in the cloud, requires a platform approach to storage. Having this platform in place as early as possible into your cloud journey is critical to long-term success.
Optimizing Compute Minimizes Cloud Storage TCO
In the cloud, you pay for compute as you use it. The more compute you require, the more expensive your cloud bill becomes. As vendors try to migrate their on-premises storage software, they are dragging a legacy storage stack along with them. In the cloud, these vendors can’t use the custom (and expensive) storage hardware they count on to attempt to hide performance problems. Instead, they must use high-end and high-cost virtual machines (VM) to deliver any reasonable amount of performance.
In the cloud, you want to use the lowest possible cost VM that can still deliver the performance your applications need. Extra performance goes unused on-premises, but you don’t continue to pay for it, although you probably paid too much upfront. However, in the cloud, you are charged for unused performance, continually, by the second, whether you use it or not. In the cloud, more so than on-premises, it is critical to buy only the precise performance you need.
StorONE spent its first eight years rewriting obsolete algorithms and collapsing the storage stack into an efficient, single layer storage platform. We use an entirely new set of algorithms to extract maximum performance from minimal compute and media resources. When using our S1:Azure solution, you can extract the maximum performance from each class of VM. Because of their bloated software, our competitors force you to pay for high-end VMs or multiple mid-range VMs to deliver the same performance that StorONE can deliver in a single low-end VM while still maximizing data protection capabilities.
Optimizing Storage Media Minimizes Cloud Storage TCO
Most storage solutions, both on-premises and in the cloud, also require a multitude of storage devices, in addition to massive compute, to deliver the performance your workloads require. On-premises, these requirements increase your upfront costs by forcing you to buy more premium storage media than you should, and it increases your TCO because these solutions are limited to one workload. Ever wonder why you have six storage systems to meet your storage challenges?
In the cloud, the requirement for many devices increases the TCO of the cloud every minute they are in operation. The meter keeps ticking away, and your operational cost continues to increase.
On-premises, StorONE has documented evidence of delivering over 1 million IOPS from just four Optane devices and hundreds of thousands of IOPS from less than a dozen SAS SSDs. This efficient performance reduces cost by requiring fewer premium drives to meet your performance requirements.
In the cloud, StorONE’s ability to deliver high-performance from just a few drives means a dramatic reduction in TCO. Our efficiency, both in terms of compute and storage media requirements, means you can “dial-in” your performance to a lower storage media class and a lower number of devices within that class.
A Storage Platform Minimizes Cloud Storage TCO
As a customer’s cloud strategy moves from the theoretical to the applicable, the cloud storage infrastructure begins to resemble their on-premises infrastructure, with multiple storage solutions for each use case. They may use a backup application to protect on-premises data by sending it into the cloud and an archive solution to move old data to the cloud. Then they may use another software application to replicate or migrate data to the cloud. Afterwards, once their data is in the cloud, they may use a storage software solution focused on block storage for their database workloads, another for their file workloads, and still another for their high-performance unstructured data requirements. Just like on-premises, the operational cost of managing all of these various solutions quickly adds up.
StorONE’s efficient use of cloud resources reduces TCO by enabling our platform to address all workloads unlike our competitors’ storage solution per workload approach. As we discussed in our last blog, “How to Best Use Azure Storage,” an on-premises S1 instance can communicate seamlessly to S1:Azure which makes an ideal disaster recovery, backup, and archive target. Once in the cloud, that same S1:Azure instance can support a variety of different workloads. You can either promote the data replicated from on-premises or start storing net new data while having the same S1:Azure instance continue to serve as a DR / Archive target for the on-premises applications users.
Cloud Exit?
An increasing number of organizations need to face a new situation: “how do I get out of the cloud?” Sometimes an application or use case doesn’t work in the cloud as well as you thought it might. When used for peak workloads or DR, Hybrid Clouds are designed to move applications back on-premises after the peak or disaster has passed. Unfortunately, many software solutions are “one-way” only and the cost of cloud egress fees is severe. StorONE enables the seamless movement of data and only sends new or changed data back, significantly reducing transition costs.
During Microsoft’s and StorONE’s Webinar, “Reduce Cloud Storage TCO for a More Effective Cloud Strategy,” you can learn how to lower cloud storage TCO to establish an effective and long-lasting cloud storage strategy.
Our Whitepaper, “A Platform Approach to Cloud Storage”. will show you how our efforts in rewriting and collapsing the legacy storage stack pays dividends in the cloud.
