Cloud Hosting is a form of hosting that is based on Cloud architecture. It offers a wide range of benefits to site owners including resource scalability, maximum uptimes, and data redundancy. However, it is important to note that many of these benefits depend on the kind of storage architecture used by the provider. In this article, we will look at the importance of a reliable storage architecture in Cloud Hosting.
A Peek Into the Traditional Storage Systems
Traditionally, websites used to interact with a centralized gateway or controller in order to store or retrieve data. The controller acted as a single point of contact for all requests as shown below:
Hence, the gateway acts as a single point of entry to the storage. Unfortunately, it also becomes a single point of failure. This leads to some drawbacks:
- Limitation of performance
- The possibility of data loss due to a single point of failure
Features and Benefits of Modern Storage Architecture
In Cloud Hosting, scalability and data security are two primary benefits offered to site owners. Hence, traditional storage systems needed to change in order to work around the drawbacks. The next-generation storage architecture, like Ceph Storage, is designed to avoid any single point of failure, making the storage more reliable. Some features and benefits of such storage architectures are as follows:
- Prevention against data loss – The best way to prevent loss of data after a disaster like a hacking attack, device failure, etc., is to ensure that the data is replicated on another server in real-time. Modern storage architectures offer up to a 3N level of redundancy which means that the data is replicated across three different servers.
- Erasure Coding – Erasure Coding is another mechanism to protect data. The storage system breaks the data into chunks and adds codes to them for additional security. In the event of a failure, the chunks are retrieved from other servers and the data is reconstructed.
- Thin Provisioning – Imagine that you are running three services which need to be stored – emails, media, and programs. In the traditional storage systems, each service is allotted a fixed server space. However, since the allotted space cannot be used for anything else, many times it goes under-utilized. Using thin provisioning, the allotment of physical and virtual space is done based on the requirement of the service. Hence, the hosting provider can offer higher flexibility and reliability.
Summarizing
A good storage architecture should feature in your checklist before finalizing a hosting provider for your website. Many customer-focussed Cloud Hosting providers using the Ceph Storage architecture to provide scalability, reliability, data protection, and maximum uptime to websites with no single point of failure. It is also self-healing and self-managing which helps to reduce administrative time and costs. Ensure that you look at the storage architecture used by the hosting provider before migrating your website.