Managing Data in the Multi-Cloud – Short Story
Overview
Multi-cloud is being projected as an attractive business proposition lately. Amidst all the talk about the benefits multi-cloud brings, there is some substance. However, to get the best out of your multi-cloud environment, you need to manage your data well. Managing data is mainly about knowing where your data is on the cloud and being able to migrate data across cloud environments with the least hassle. Though there are other factors such as cost, security and automation that will drive your multi-cloud strategy, the factors mentioned earlier are especially applicable in the case of multi-cloud environment. The factors are discussed in detail below.
Knowing where your data is
When you move data to the cloud, generally you do not need to bother about the data location. You care about accessing and manipulating data. Managing data is the job of the cloud service provider. However, does that ensure absolute data security? Data locations can change regularly in the cloud and that is where a potential security threat can lie. How do you ensure that, for example, when your data is copied to another server because the original server malfunctioned, the original server will be safely handled? How will you keep track of data constantly changing places? So, keeping track of your data has been important in a cloud environment. Now, with a multi-cloud environment, it is more so and a challenging task.
Data migration
Data migration across different cloud setups has always been a challenge. There are two types of challenges: technical and lock-in periods. Technical challenges could surface in the form of, say, platform incompatibilities while lock-in periods with one cloud provider prevents you from migrating your data to another setup. However, solutions are being developed. For example, the software-defined storage (SDS) decouples the storage from specific hardware platforms.
Security
Security is a big concern when you manage data in a multi-cloud environment. Data is the key to any business success. So, proper security mechanism should be adopted to ensure that the data is protected. Various cloud security mechanisms are deployed as per the business need.
Cloud administration
Administration of multi-cloud environment is a big challenge. Proper expertise should be available for smooth operation of the data. The recovery, archival, monitoring etc should be done in a planned way to avoid any disaster.
Conclusion
Data management on a multi-cloud setup is not easy. Data management problems, it seems are new in the context of a multi-cloud setup. So, there will be teething problems. Solutions are being worked on to address the problems but finding something stable will take time.
Author Bio: Kaushik is a Technical Architect by profession having 20 years of experience in IT industry. He is a passionate technical writer.He writes on different technologies related to open-source, AI, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Java/J2EE etc.
