Intelligent Data Centres Issue 32 | Page 63

UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
Aron Brand , CTO , CTERA
hybrid cloud storage , as defined by Gartner in its Market Guide for Hybrid Cloud Storage : burst for capacity , disaster recovery , burst for compute , and data orchestration .
Caching vs . tiering : Burst for capacity
Burst for capacity allows Edge devices to expand their storage capacity indefinitely and elastically , leaking excess data into a low-cost cloud storage tier . Cloud storage is particularly cost-effective for capacity bursting because it is elastic and organisations only pay for the capacity they utilise . Both tiering and caching are well suited to this use case .
Caching vs . tiering : Burst for compute
When a dataset is created locally but needs to be accessed in the cloud for processing or analytics , burst for compute is employed . A visual effects company , for example , may run 1,000 cloud servers for eight hours to render 3D models developed by a team of artists working locally . Tiering is not appropriate for this use case , as live data processing ( i . e . rendering ) cannot take place in the cloud .
Caching saves both hot and cold data in the cloud , allowing data analysis and processing to make use of the cloud ’ s high-performance compute capabilities .
Caching vs . tiering : Disaster Recovery
Local data is backed up to the cloud for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity . Caching enables Disaster Recovery capabilities and , more critically , fast recovery by keeping all data in highly robust and redundant cloud storage . www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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