Multi-Cloud — Object Storage for the Beginners
Author: Monowar Mukul (AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional, GCP Professional Cloud Architect, Azure Solutions Architect Expert )
Co-Author & Reviewer: Nassyam Basha (Oracle ACE Director, OCM)
Introduction
We hear a lot from cloud professionals, that if we are proficient with any one cloud adaption of other clouds is a piece of cake. We are starting a series of articles to educate the naming, and terminology of how it is used in all major clouds for the same task.
For example, in OCI we call it a compartment and in the same functionality in Azure, we call it a Resource Group. These articles/videos will clarify and help to adapt quickly to become Multi-Cloud Professionals.
Object Storage
In this article, we are explaining about Cloud Object Storage services and let’s see how it was used in all the major Cloud services.
- Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
- Google Cloud Storage
- OCI Object Storage
Cloud object storage is a type of data storage service provided by cloud computing platforms. It offers a scalable and highly available solution for storing vast amounts of unstructured data, such as documents, images, videos, backups, and other files. The data is stored as objects, where each object consists of the actual data, metadata, and a unique identifier.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
OCI Object Storage is a scalable, fully managed cloud storage service provided by Oracle Cloud. Key features of OCI Object Storage include:
Scalability: Object Storage can handle large amounts of data, and you can easily scale your storage capacity up or down as needed without disrupting service.
Durability and Availability: Data stored in OCI Object Storage is replicated across multiple availability domains within a region, providing high durability and availability even in the event of hardware failures.
Security: OCI Object Storage provides several security features, including encryption of data at rest and in transit, access controls, and integration with IAM (Identity and Access Management) for fine-grained access control.
Data Lifecycle Management: You can define lifecycle policies to automatically move objects between storage tiers (e.g., from standard to archive storage) based on specified criteria like age or access patterns, helping you optimize storage costs.
Keep in mind that the features and capabilities of public cloud services may evolve over time, so it’s a good idea to refer to respective cloud official documentation for the most up-to-date information.
Amazon Web Services
AWS offers various object storage solutions to meet different needs. The primary object storage service provided by AWS is Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). Amazon S3 is highly scalable, durable, and secure, making it an ideal choice for storing and retrieving any amount of data at any time.
Here are some key features and aspects of AWS object storage (Amazon S3):
Buckets: Data is organized in Amazon S3 into “buckets.” Buckets act as containers that hold objects. You can create multiple buckets within your AWS account and manage access controls at the bucket level.
Objects: Objects are the individual data units stored in S3. Each object consists of the data itself, metadata (information about the object), and a unique identifier (a key). Objects can be virtually any type of data, such as documents, images, videos, or application data.
Scalability: Amazon S3 is designed to be highly scalable. It can handle virtually unlimited amounts of data, making it suitable for applications with varying storage requirements.
Durability and Availability: S3 provides high durability, ensuring that your data is resilient to failures. AWS replicates data across multiple devices and facilities automatically, reducing the risk of data loss. The service also offers high availability, with a service-level agreement (SLA) promising 99.99% uptime.
Data Lifecycle Management: You can set lifecycle policies on your S3 objects to automatically transition them between different storage classes over time, optimizing costs based on data access patterns.
Security: Amazon S3 offers multiple layers of security. You can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to control access to your S3 buckets and objects. Additionally, S3 supports server-side encryption, allowing you to encrypt data at rest.
Versioning: S3 supports versioning, enabling you to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object stored in your bucket.
Access Control: You can configure fine-grained access control to your S3 resources using Access Control Lists (ACLs) and bucket policies.
Data Transfer Acceleration: AWS offers S3 Transfer Acceleration, which uses Amazon CloudFront’s globally distributed edge locations to accelerate the transfer of files to and from S3.
Microsoft Azure
Azure Blob Storage is a cloud-based object storage service provided by Microsoft Azure. It allows you to store and manage unstructured data such as documents, images, videos, and other binary data. Azure Blob Storage is part of the Azure Storage suite and is widely used for a variety of applications, including backup and restore, data archiving, content distribution, and big data analytics. Key features of Azure Blob Storage:
Storage Tiers: Azure Blob Storage offers different storage tiers to help you optimize costs based on the access patterns of your data. The available storage tiers are:
- Hot Access Tier: This tier is suitable for frequently accessed data and has slightly higher storage costs but lower access costs.
- Cool Access Tier: This tier is ideal for data that is accessed less frequently but requires quick access when needed. It has lower storage costs but slightly higher access costs compared to the hot tier.
- Archive Access Tier: This tier is designed for data that is rarely accessed and requires long-term retention at the lowest storage costs. However, data retrieval from the archive tier may take longer.
Blob Types: Azure Blob Storage supports three types of blobs: Block blobs: Ideal for storing large binary data or files, where data is split into smaller blocks. Page blobs: Suitable for random read/write operations, commonly used for virtual machine disks. Append blobs: Designed for scenarios where data needs to be appended to the end of a blob, like log files.
Data Redundancy: Azure Blob Storage automatically replicates your data to ensure high availability and durability. You can choose from different replication options, such as locally redundant storage (LRS), zone-redundant storage (ZRS), geo-redundant storage (GRS), and geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS).
Blob Lifecycle Management: With Blob Lifecycle Management, you can define rules to automatically manage the lifecycle of your data. This includes transitioning blobs to different storage tiers or deleting them based on predefined criteria, helping you optimize storage costs.
Security: Blob Storage supports Azure role-based access control (RBAC) and shared access signatures (SAS). These security features allow you to control and restrict access to your blobs, providing an added layer of protection to your data.
Blob Versioning: Blob versioning is a feature that allows you to preserve and retrieve previous versions of blobs. When versioning is enabled, any changes or overwrites to blobs create a new version, providing a historical record of changes.
Object Replication: Azure Blob Storage offers object replication, a feature that allows you to replicate your data across different Azure regions or within the same region for enhanced disaster recovery and availability.
Azure Blob Storage Explorer: The Azure Storage Explorer provides a user-friendly graphical interface for interacting with Blob Storage, simplifying the management of your blobs.
Azure Blob Storage SDKs: The availability of SDKs for various programming languages makes it convenient to interact with Blob Storage programmatically, making it easier for developers to integrate the service into their applications.
Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Object Storage, commonly known as Google Cloud Storage, offers a range of features designed to securely and reliably store and manage vast amounts of unstructured data. Here are some key features:
Scalability and Durability: Google Cloud Storage is designed to be highly scalable and reliable. It can handle massive amounts of data and automatically scales as your storage needs grow. The data is distributed across multiple locations for redundancy, providing high durability even in the face of hardware failures.
Global Availability: Google Cloud Storage is available across multiple regions worldwide, allowing you to choose the storage location that is geographically closest to your users or applications to minimize latency and improve data access times.
Data Lifecycle Management: You can define data lifecycle policies to automatically transition objects to different storage classes (e.g., from standard to coldline or archival storage) based on their age, helping you optimize storage costs.
Object Lifecycle Management: You can set lifecycle rules to automatically delete objects after a specified time or based on certain conditions. This helps with data retention policies and can reduce storage costs by removing unnecessary data.
Security and Access Control: Google Cloud Storage offers robust security features to protect your data. You can manage access permissions using Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, ensuring that only authorized users or applications can access the stored objects.
Versioning: Google Cloud Storage allows you to enable versioning for your buckets, which means that every time you overwrite or delete an object, previous versions are retained. This feature provides a safety net for data recovery and compliance purposes.
Storage Classes: Google Cloud Storage offers different storage classes with varying performance and pricing levels to suit different needs, such as Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive storage classes.
Summary
In this article, we’ve tried to differentiate the Object Storage key futures and benefits in various Major clouds OCI, AWS, Azure, and GCP. Apart from the article, Monowar Mukul recorded a good video along with the explanation. This article certainly provides overall insights and proficiency with Object Storage.
