Estás considerando opciones de almacenamiento en la nube. ¿Cómo se garantiza la escalabilidad sin arruinarse?

Given the current data growth, assessing the storage growth plan in the cloud is crucial. Cloud storage is essential for various factors, including availability, accessibility, and scalability. To optimize our cloud storage, we need to evaluate it based on the following points: 1) What is the percentage share of cold and hot data? 2) What is the percentage share of high, medium, and low-performance data? 3) What is the percentage share of structured and unstructured data? By accurately assessing these aspects, we can determine the appropriate storage requirements for our needs. It's not always necessary to use high-performance SSD storage.

Assess your current and future storage needs comprehensively for cost-effective cloud scalability. Analyse data volumes, types, and access patterns. Remember, scalability includes handling increased data throughput and user numbers efficiently. Understanding these factors helps avoid costly overprovisioning and enables selection of an optimal storage solution. To achieve economical cloud storage, prioritise data tiering based on required responsiveness. This allows leveraging lower-cost options for less frequently accessed data. Make this in-depth data review a priority from day zero to ensure the most cost-effective and scalable cloud storage strategy.

Analyze how your data is accessed and used. Identify which data is frequently accessed (hot data) and which is rarely accessed (cold data). Estimate your future storage needs based on current growth trends to plan for scalability.

Chances are, you will need more compute capacity in certain times only. Adjust as needed, this way you won't waste money when the servers are not under pressure. As another architecture tip, I would recommend consider serverless when possible.

Choose wisely. Amazon S3is a service that provides object-level storage. Amazon EBS is a service that provides block-level storage volumes that you can use with Amazon EC2 instances in a single AZ. Amazon EFS is a scalable file system used with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources, and is available in mulitiple AZs. Alternatively, if you are interested in Google Cloud, consider Google Cloud storage, Cloud Filestore, or Persistent Disk. All of these are pay as you go services.

Select storage solutions like: Amazon S3: Offers S3 Standard for frequently accessed data, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-IA for infrequent access, and S3 Glacier for archival storage. Azure Blob Storage: Provides Hot, Cool, and Archive tiers.

Conduct regular audits of your storage usage and costs. Look for unused or underutilized storage that can be reclaimed or optimized. Set up alerts for cost anomalies to quickly identify and address unexpected spikes in storage costs.

Consider MediaStream, a video streaming startup, regularly monitoring its cloud storage usage on Google Cloud. They use Google Cloud's built-in tools to analyze storage patterns, identifying underutilized resources and periods of low demand. During off-peak times, MediaStream scales down storage to cut costs. They also implement automated scripts to clean up redundant or obsolete data, freeing up space. This proactive approach ensures they only pay for what they use, optimizing their storage expenses. By closely monitoring and adjusting their storage needs, MediaStream maintains cost efficiency without compromising service quality.

Keep costs up front! ✅Utilize cost management tools: Use built-in tools to monitor your storage usage and costs. Set up alerts and analyze trends to avoid unexpected expenses. ✅Track performance and cost metrics: Regularly review metrics to ensure you're not over-provisioned and adjust your storage strategy as needed.

Imagine FinServe, a fintech company, leveraging cloud automation on Azure. They use Azure's Auto-Scale feature combined with machine learning algorithms to predict storage demand based on historical data and transaction patterns. When the system detects an upcoming peak, it automatically provisions additional storage, and similarly, scales down during predicted low periods. Additionally, they use Azure Logic Apps to trigger automated cleanup processes for obsolete data. This modern, predictive approach ensures FinServe always has optimal storage, minimizing costs while maintaining performance, leading to significant long-term savings.

Use cloud elasticity! ✅Use auto-scaling capabilities: Choose storage solutions that offer automatic scaling to handle increased demand without requiring manual intervention. ✅Pay-as-you-go pricing: Opt for pricing models that charge based on usage rather than fixed rates to align costs with your actual needs.

Take advantage of the free tier offerings from cloud providers for lower usage levels. Use promotional credits or enterprise agreements that offer discounts or credits for cloud storage.

Imagine EduCloud, an online learning platform, evaluating cloud storage providers. They compare AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, noting AWS charges for data storage, operations, and data transfer. Google Cloud offers similar pricing but with potential hidden fees for frequent data access. Azure provides competitive rates but charges extra for high data egress. EduCloud analyzes their usage patterns, which include frequent data access and occasional large data transfers, and negotiates with AWS for better terms as their storage needs grow. By understanding and comparing pricing models, EduCloud ensures cost-effective and scalable storage.

Evaluate Data Redundancy Options! ✅Select appropriate redundancy levels: Choose data redundancy options (e.g., replication or erasure coding) that balance cost with the required level of data durability and availability.

ℹ️ Storage is one of those things that can vendor-lock you very easily. You have to think about how costly it would be in case you want to move to another vendor in the future. ⚠️ There is a hidden cost to affordable storage in the cloud and that's data transfer fees.

When talking about storage we need to be aware of the different storage types we have: volume, file and object storage. Each of these have their own characteristics we need to understand. For instance, what happens when I have and object and I need to change 1 byte of it? Should it better to use a file instead an object? Or is it better to store that file within a volume? Obviously, these are questions we need to ask ourselves beforehand (among others). Once answered, we also need to analyze the options we have in the cloud for these storage types and how appropriate they are for our use case.