What is Private Cloud Storage?

Private Cloud Storage is a type of scalable and redundant storage solution where data is stored on remote servers that are dedicated to a single customer. Because of this, it is considered more secure than public cloud storage solutions, where servers are shared across many customers. The servers powering a private cloud storage solution can be located in your office, in your company’s datacenter, or in another company’s datacenter.

What’s Makes Private Cloud Storage Different?

The main difference between private cloud storage and public cloud storage solutions is that the servers running a private cloud storage solution are dedicated to a single customer. The servers running a public cloud storage solution are shared across many customers. For this reason, private cloud storage solutions are inherently more secure than public cloud storage solutions. They can also deliver better performance, because the underlying server resources can be finely tuned to the specific performance requirements of the workloads utilizing the data and these servers are not impacted by the resource utilization of other customers.

When Should I Use a Private Cloud Storage Solution?

Private cloud storage solutions are ideal for mission-critical data that requires a higher level of security. Examples include client data, financial data, and healthcare data. It is also an ideal solution for mission critical data where I/O performance is crucial.

Are there different types of cloud storage solutions?

There are two different types of private cloud storage solutions that you can choose from for your business:

• Object-based private cloud storage utilizes a storage architecture that stores data as objects that can be manipulated through programmatic API calls by applications. This type of storage architecture has been popularized by companies like Facebook (who utilizes it to store images), Spotify (who utilizes it to store songs) and Dropbox (who utilizes it to store files), and is best used for applications that rely on massive amounts of unstructured data.
• Block-based private cloud storage utilizes a storage architecture that stores data in volumes or blocks that appear like a hard drive to an operating system. For this reason, block-based private cloud storage is ideal for applications that rely on structured data like file systems and databases.

Which cloud storage solution is right for my business?

The answer to this question largely depends on the type of data that you are storing for your workloads. If your data is largely unstructured (i.e images, audio, etc.) then an object-based private cloud storage solution is the ideal solution for your business. If you data is largely structured (i.e. files, databases, etc.), then a block-based private cloud storage solution would be ideal.

If you would like more information on cloud storage solutions at Liquid Web, please visit our cloud storage product page.