STaaS (Storage as a service) is a business model in which a company provides technical expertise and storage space to individuals or enterprises.
There are two basic characteristics of STaaS, namely "Resource Pooling" and "Servicing".
Resource pooling refers to forming a logically unified resource pool of various types of storage devices, realizing unified management and unified scheduling, and providing the most suitable resources according to business needs so that limited resources can be fully utilized.
Servicing refers to the provision of storage services at different SLA levels according to the requirements of business performance, capacity, and data protection levels. Users only need to perform simple service subscription operations to quickly obtain services.
STaaS (Storage as a service) can help users build a truly unified resource pool and eliminate information islands. It realizes data flow internally, builds perfect data protection, flexibly adapts to multiple services on the upstream, manages multiple media well on the downstream, and accommodates other storage.
STaaS (Storage as a service) is generally regarded as a good choice by some small or neutral companies because these companies lack capital budgets or technical staff to implement and maintain their storage systems. STaaS (Storage as a service) is being promoted in all enterprises as a way to reduce disaster recovery risks, provide long-term record keeping, and improve enterprise sustainable operation and availability.
In traditional storage boxes, data cannot be shared and cannot be measured. Generally, only volumes or files are allocated to users, and some protection features are added at most. It often encounters problems such as over-provisioning of capacity, insufficient performance, and unpredictability. Generally, the idea of doing as much as possible is used to maximize the allocation of resources, which will not only cause a waste of resources, but also it is difficult to get feedback on the effect of the allocation. STaaS (Storage as a service) designs SLAs from the dimensions of performance, capacity, data protection, reliability, and security through the concept of storage service. It allows users to choose based on multiple dimensions to match the storage requirements of the business. Measure storage services through comprehensive monitoring and alerting of SLA resources. And when a bottleneck occurs in the service level, the SLA level can be optimized and dynamically changed to adjust the business's changes to storage resources in time. To achieve the standardized definition, measurement, and optimization of storage services.
In traditional storage systems, the management of equipment and the issuance of services are all done by the system administrator. System administrators should not only pay attention to how to create storage RAID, pool, and LUN but also pay attention to which applications are available and which storage is allocated and mounted to the corresponding applications. When enterprise business and storage systems are complex and large, storage resources are difficult to fully utilize or match diverse businesses. STaaS (Storage as a service) realizes the flexible separation of service definition and service application. First, the administrator standardizes the SLA definition of the applications involved in the enterprise and matches them to different storage pools through different Tiers. Then, the tenants who know the business and storage services apply for storage resources to realize the refined matching of storage resources and applications. The administrator only performs the operation, maintenance, measurement, and monitoring of the system.
Storage cloudification is developed under the cloud computing business model. Cloudification requires cloud services to have the basic capabilities of measuring, charging, and plug-and-play by level. Storage cloudification is the first step in achieving data cloudification. Only when the storage achieves the service level, can the cloud service level match be realized reasonably. Users can match public cloud storage SLA levels based on existing storage SLA levels and purchase public cloud storage services to facilitate future data cloud backup, migration, and flow.
After different storage systems are connected to the system and tags are marked according to different storage capabilities, when SLA standardization is created, storage devices and storage pools that do not meet the requirements can be automatically filtered, simplifying the storage and storage standardization process.
In traditional storage, when resources are created and distributed, each business needs to be manually created from RAID, disk, pool, etc., which is cumbersome and error-prone. STaaS (Storage as a service) automates the storage service level standardization, creation, and distribution process. You only need to enter a few key parameters according to the wizard to complete resource creation. To provide a service catalog, tenants only need to enter the capacity and service level (SLA) to complete the service delivery.
Cloud storage is a mode of online storage, that is, storing data on multiple virtual servers usually hosted by a third party instead of dedicated servers.
Hosting companies operate large-scale data centers. Those who need data storage hosting can purchase or lease storage space from them to meet their data storage needs. According to customer needs, data center operators prepare storage virtualization resources on the back-end and provide them in the form of storage pools.
Customers can use this storage pool to store files or objects by themselves. These resources may be distributed on many server hosts.
The cloud storage service is accessed through a web service application program interface (API), or through a Web-based user interface.
Object Storage Service (OSS) is a secure, cost-effective, and high-durability cloud storage service provided by Alibaba Cloud. It enables you to store large amounts of data in the cloud. OSS can provide 99.9999999999% (twelve 9's) data durability (designed for) and 99.995% service availability.
Object Storage Service(OSS) supports RESTful APIs independent from the console. You can store and access any type of data anytime, anywhere, and from any application.
You can use API operations and SDKs provided by Alibaba Cloud or OSS migration tools to transfer large amounts of data to and from Alibaba Cloud OSS. You can use OSS buckets of the Standard storage class to store image, audio, and video files for apps and large websites. You can use OSS buckets of the Infrequent Access (IA), Archive, or Cold Archive storage class to store objects that are not accessed often at a low cost.
Alibaba Cloud storage solutions are oriented to diversified scenarios of users in multiple industries, providing global enterprises with more secure, stable, reliable, and intelligent data storage services. These solutions can help enterprises migrate their business to the cloud, laying a data foundation for enterprises to realize digital transformation.
Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS) is an encrypted, secure, cost-effective, and easy-to-use object storage service that enables you to store, back up, and archive large amounts of data in the cloud, with a guaranteed durability of 99.9999999999%(12 9’s). RESTful APIs allow storage and access to OSS anywhere on the Internet. You can elastically scale the capacity and processing capability and choose from a variety of storage types to optimize the storage cost.
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