Introduction to Cloud Storage Services

Gulab Singh Verma¹, Lokesh Kumar Sahu²

^1,2SoS in Electronics and Photonics, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University Raipur (C.G.)

gulabverma.gsv@gmail.com, sahulucky14@gmail.com

 *Corresponding Author: gulabverma.gsv@gmail.com

Abstract:

Cloud computing has become one of the hottest technologies of the emerging 21st century technology, Cloud computing is related to a variety of themes that take on a larger dimension of mainstream media, there are various cloud computing books have also been available on shelves in recent years. The Internet makes the world more accessible. Cloud storage is an important infrastructure for achieving seamless data sharing and experience of service communications from different users, different applications, different devices around the world. It will be a new public infrastructure service, such as water, electricity, available anytime, anywhere. Cloud is not a specific product, but a way to deliver IT services that can be used when needed, expand up and down as needed, and follow a usage model. Cloud computing is a computer style in which computer resources are easily accessible and accessible, easy to use, cheap, and just working. Cloud is not a point product or a single technology, but a way to deliver IT services in a way that provides self-sufficiency, demand and use for each payment. By making data available in the cloud, easily accessible and ubiquitous, usually at much lower costs, increase their value by enabling opportunities for improved collaboration, integration, and analysis on a common shared platform.

Keywords: Cloud storage, Cloud computing, Internet, Cloud storage models.

Introduction:

Since many decades there is continuous progress in field of computer but for the last two decades the computer revolution has been developing faster than ever. At 50’s a 5 MB Hard drive has a size of almost two refrigerators. Then it's shrinks to A floppy discs, CD ROM, DVD, Pen drive and semiconductor chips. But today we don't like to carry any chip or hard drive too around with us as a storage device. We want to save our data at a place so that we don't have to carry any physical storage, That's why we need Cloud storage. Cloud storage is a part of Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing is a remote server which store, manage and process the data rather than local server. The idea of Cloud storage comes in the time of 60’s. In 1960 Jon Mc Carthy first introduce Mainframe Time Sharing, after that in 1969 J.C.R. Licklider invented the APRANET (Advanced research projects agency network) ,till 1970 a software  was developed for virtualization. First commercially cloud storage service Elastic Compute Cloud (ECC) was launched by Amazon, Google has also launched its own cloud storage service in 2008. Today there are lots of providers which are providing cloud storages.

Cloud Storage :

“Cloud storage is a service that store our data remotely and made it available to us anywhere anytime via internet.” In today's time when there is constant increase in people's personal and organizational data, Cloud storage is capable to store these data because of scalability. People can run or access their program anywhere, anytime in any device through internet by using Cloud storage. So far, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and other popular companies have upgraded their cloud computing system, and installed it. Cloud computing as one of the most important strategies in the future.

Cloud Computing:

The definition of cloud computing can be define back to 1961. The famous American computer scientist Turing Award winner John McCarthy put the concept of cloud computing. However that computer power can be used by users such as water, electricity, gas or other community app. For a long time, however, this idea remained only in the dream stage. Until the beginning of In the 21st century, this idea has been well-known for technological advances and the maturity of application and 2010 is the first year of the real era of clouds.

How it  work:

To study the working of cloud storage we must understand the following two architectures –

1.     General architecture

2.     Virtualization architecture of Cloud storage.

1.      General architecture

It is made up of three part a. Front side b. Storage logic c. End side.

Front side is a link that connect the user to the main server using internet as they required (Public, Private or Hybrid N//W).

Storage logic create pools for storing the data, it copies the data and send them to different locations. When user want get back their data it provide them from fastest N/W rather than slow N/W.

End side is the physical storage which stores the data in different locations. These physical storage are called Data centres. All the cloud data stored in Data centres  in multiple copies so there is no risk of losing data. Thus by using these  blocks process of  cloud storage works.

Fig – General architecture of Cloud storage

2.     Virtualization architecture –

Virtualization is a process that allow to share single physical resources to multiple users. It is called multitenant architecture also. Main server of cloud providers consist of large number of Processors, RAM, ROM and N/W capacity, this main server is called host server. We use the virtualization software in the server like Hypervisor which provides n numbers of virtual machines according to the requirement of the users  by using main server. Hypervisor is use like a Virtualization machine monitor also. Today we have many virtualization software in place of Hypervisor. Virtualization made cloud storage more reliable.

FIG: VIRTUALIZATION

Service model of Cloud storage:

According to providing services of  the cloud storage we can divide it to following categories a. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)  b. Platform as a service (PaaS) c. Software as a service (SaaS). An example made it easy to study these categories we all work different software in our devices we can’t make change on it we can only use it so it is SaaS, Some people create their own website with the help of Google engine by using their platform and tools it is PaaS, and if any one is creating his own website and he manage O/S, data storage and other control he use only infrastructure from provider so it is IaaS.   

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS):

In this service user use only infrastructure from providers and took the other controls himself. Physical data storage , designing, programming languages, operating system and security issues controlled by the user it is called IaaS.

Platform as a service (PaaS):

In this service user get only virtual storage to work , no any controls on the physical data storage , security issues. User use the toos provided by the provider there is no need to buy any tools from the other resources. In this service user get a platform to work so it is called Paas.

Software as a service (SaaS):

there is no any control to the user on the cloud data , user can only use the cloud data. It is called SaaS because we don’t need to install these software in our device. When we need to use it we can use it by using internet.

Deployment model of Cloud storage:

According this model cloud storage can be categories as follow a. Public cloud b. Private cloud c. Hybrid cloud.

Public cloud is open for all to use. We can share it to any one via internet. It is pay per use service.It is cost efficient. Only one drawback is here that it is not high security efficient. Example of Public cloud is Google App engine etc.

Private cloud is used for any organization or institute where high security efficiency is needed. It share to only their organizational servers, not to all. But is not cost efficient because of its high security services. Example of Private cloud is Amazon private cloud, Microsoft private cloud.

Hybrid cloud:

It is a combination of Public and Private cloud which is high security efficient and cost efficient both.

Merits of the Cloud storage:

 Merits are as follow

§  Can access anywhere, anytime using internet.

§  Scalability.

§  Flexibility .

§  Low cost.

§  Pay-per-use.

§  Less energy consumption etc.

Limitations:

Only one limitations is there that it requires high speed data connection without it ,cloud storage can’t work.

Conclusion:

Cloud storage is a great invention it make our devices more portable and solve the problem of data managing. Use of cloud storage is increasing exponentially. We know that cloud storage is a less power consumer rather than it 1% of world wide electricity is used in data centres. Continuous progress is going on in this field, in future there will be no any physical storage in our device only cloud data will be use.

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