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Data volume is growing at an exponential rate, with the amount of data generated by businesses increasing rapidly and presenting significant challenges for traditional storage solutions. Businesses today are challenged with finding a scalable, reliable and cost-effective solution for storing these massive amounts of data. Object storage can be combined with traditional storage methods for a practical approach to storing large quantities of unstructured data such as media files, audio files, archives and documents. Cloud object storage has emerged as a modern solution for managing large-scale, unstructured data, offering scalability and suitability for cloud-native applications.
The benefits of object storage include scalability, cost-effectiveness, and durability, making it ideal for managing large volumes of unstructured data in cloud environments. We’ve listed the top three benefits of using object storage to resolve your data storage challenges.
What is Object Storage?
Object storage, sometimes referred to as object-based storage, is a modern data storage architecture designed to efficiently manage and store large amounts of unstructured data. Unlike traditional storage systems such as block storage and file storage, which organize data in rigid hierarchies or fixed blocks, object storage systems use a structurally flat data environment. Each piece of data—whether it’s an audio file, image, video, web page, or sensor data—is stored as an individual object. These objects contain not only the data itself, but also customizable metadata and a unique identifier, making it easy to locate and manage information across multiple devices and platforms.
One of the key features of object storage solutions is their ability to handle vast amounts of unstructured data. As organizations generate more data from sources like rich media, IoT devices, and cloud-native applications, the need for a scalable and flexible data store becomes critical. Object storage’s architecture is specifically designed to store large data volumes without the complexity of traditional hierarchical file systems. This makes it ideal for use cases such as data lakes, big data analytics, and backup data repositories, where managing unstructured data efficiently is essential.
Object storage removes the limitations of traditional storage area networks and hierarchical file systems by allowing data to be stored in its native format, without the need for complex data blocks or directory structures. This reduced complexity object storage approach streamlines storage management and makes it easier to configure object storage systems for a wide range of applications, from disaster recovery strategies to persistent data stores for cloud infrastructure.
Another advantage of object storage is its support for customizable metadata, which enables advanced data management and analytics. Organizations can tag objects with relevant data, making it easier to search, organize, and perform big data analytics on large amounts of unstructured data. This capability is especially valuable for businesses looking to gain insights from their data or support cloud-based object storage for scalable, on-demand access.
In comparison to file and block storage, object storage offers a more flexible and scalable solution for storing and managing large amounts of data. Its object-based storage architecture is designed to grow with your data needs, making it an essential technology for organizations facing ever-increasing data volumes and demanding data access requirements.
Ultimately, object storage is important for any organization seeking to store unstructured data efficiently, manage data across multiple devices, and support modern cloud-native applications. Its ability to provide a persistent data store, simplify storage management, and enable advanced data analytics makes object storage a cornerstone of today’s data storage technology landscape.
Cost-effective Cloud Object Storage
Object storage utilizes a flat architecture and assigns individual objects a unique identifier to enable easy data retrieval and replication. Since object storage doesn’t have the cumbersome overhead required by traditional file architectures, nearly all storage device capacity can be utilized, maximizing storage space efficiency. This efficiency drives down the cost of object storage. Object storage is also a key component of cloud storage solutions, enabling organizations to scale efficiently.
Keep in mind that though cost-effective, object storage is not simply a less expensive alternative for server storage. It is not meant to store databases, log files or frequently accessed data. The best use cases for object storage include:
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Backups or archives
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Media files such as images, music or video
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Web content such as web pages
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Documents
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Customer data
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Data backup
Object Storage’s Scalability
Traditional file storage methods rely on a hierarchical file system architecture, which can make data retrieval difficult and presents scalability challenges as file volume increases. Because of its flat structure, object storage doesn’t have the architectural limitations associated with file and block storage and is scalable with a near infinite capacity. Object storage can elastically increase storage capacity and consolidate storage resources into larger pools, efficiently handling large data volumes. So, as data volume increases, this solution can easily and quickly accommodate growing storage needs.
Reliable, Highly Available, and Disaster Recovery
Object storage easily replicates copies of your data to multiple, geographically dispersed cloud nodes to ensure there is no single point of failure. This level of replication and resiliency helps protect against data loss and ensures business continuity, which is often more challenging using file and block storage methods. Additionally, at-rest and in-transit file encryption provides another layer of data protection, highlighting the importance of data security in object storage. Erasure coding is used to ensure data stored in object storage can be restored even if it is deleted or corrupted, allowing recovery by reconstructing the data pieces using information stored elsewhere in the array. These methods of protection keep data secure and readily available.
When considering the broader storage system landscape, object storage differs from traditional file and block storage, as well as from a storage area network, by offering greater reliability and availability through its distributed architecture and object-based approach.
Object storage can be a valuable part of your storage strategy, and can help you overcome many hurdles associated with storing large amounts of data. DartPoints’ Object Storage is ultra-durable with geo-diverse data replication and encryption both in-transit and at rest. It also offers cost savings that other providers do not, including unlimited API transactions, for zero surprises on your bill. Check out DartPoints’ storage offerings to learn more.