Given all the discussion regarding cloud storage, it is easy to get confused. So, we decided to consolidate it down to the top 5 reasons to leverage Zadara Storage and Google Cloud Platform as your cloud architecture.
Gain the Elasticity, Agility and Economic Benefits of OpEx Storage
The market is rapidly moving away from the traditional cycle of purchasing CapEx storage every 3-5 years, to the OpEx model of Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS). There are many reasons for this but they all generally revolve around: 1) Operational benefits (e.g., agility, scalability, elasticity, less management burden, no need to upgrade your storage, reconfigure as needed); and 2) Economic Benefits (e.g., no upfront CapEx payments, only pay for what you use, no overprovisioning). Essentially, your storage resources are perfectly aligned with your business because you can change, on-the-fly, as-needed – and you only pay for what you use. This is a huge difference from the old world of purchasing more than what you need, managing it, upgrading it, and then replacing it every 3-5 years.
As you move to the Cloud, don’t give up any of your functionality
One of the reasons companies have avoided the cloud is that vendors have asked them to leave behind many of the enterprise-class features they have come to depend on over the past couple of decades. Why would you want to take two steps forward, only to take one step backward? This doesn’t make any sense. With the combination of Zadara Storage and the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), you are able to retain all of your enterprise class storage features, but also gain the flexibility and economic benefits of the cloud. With Zadara and GCP, you can enjoy:
- Block, File and Object Storage
- Clusters
- Snapshots, Remote Replication, Online Volume Migration
- Hardware isolation
- Metropolitan failover
- And more…
Easy Migration to the Cloud
Another common question is “how do I get my data to the cloud?” Google has partnered with Zadara Storage to leverage Zadara’s deep experience in “hydrating the cloud”, or moving data to the cloud environment. Zadara offers a variety of options for moving data to the cloud. Whether your data is static or an online production environment that cannot afford any downtime, Zadara Storage can assist with hydrating your cloud environment. Download our Zadara Storage Cloud Hydration data sheet here.
Backup to Object Storage
Zadara Storage offers a unique capability to backup your data to object storage targets. This can be the Zadara VPSA Object Storage, Google Object Storage or even AWS S3. As you architect redundancy and resiliency into your storage platform, it is always smart to protect your data by co-locating it in different locations and possibly with different vendors.
Multi-Cloud Support
Using the same logic as above, your storage architecture should prevent any single-point-of-failure, whether it be a single piece of hardware, a single location, or even a single vendor. As you design your storage infrastructure, it’s imperative to build an architecture that protects you from unexpected failures. With Zadara Storage, we uniquely connect concurrently to AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and many other cloud service providers. Whether you use Google as your primary Cloud Service Provider or as a secondary backup for another CSP, Zadara Storage can connect to both concurrently and share data between them. This provides you with the ultimate in flexibility.
Align your storage with your business, not the other way around.
A Phased Approach: On-Premises as-a-Service (OPaaS)
Not everyone is ready to migrate all of their data to the cloud. In some cases, it makes sense to take a phased approach. With Zadara Storage, you can enjoy the benefits of OpEx storage as-a-service within your own data center using On-Premises as-a-Service. As you become more comfortable with the cloud, you can add cloud-based storage and replicate between your on-premises and cloud platform.
