Two Levels of Midrange Hybrid Cloud Storage Solution Capabilities

This article was written on September 12, 2024 by Jerome M. Wendt, president and founder, Data Center Intelligence Group LLC (DCIG).

2 Levels of Midrange Hybrid Cloud Storage Solution Capabilities

Most organizations no longer just want to have hybrid cloud capabilities as part of their core data center capabilities. They expect their internal data centers to deliver them.

Thankfully, many enterprise technologies today already offer hybrid cloud capabilities. However, there’s a question every organization must ask and answer when it comes to choosing a solution with hybrid cloud capabilities.

What constitutes hybrid cloud capabilities, particularly when it comes to midrange storage solutions? As DCIG recently uncovered in its research, midrange storage solutions possess at least two levels of hybrid cloud capabilities.

Hybrid cloud is the preferred patch forward

Hybrid Cloud Storage Solution On-premises, cloud, or hybrid cloud? That’s a question few organizations ponder any longer as they evaluate the capabilities of their core datacenter technologies. Rather, most organizations of all sizes across all business verticals expect them to support hybrid cloud as a standard feature.

Most enterprises (82%) already have a hybrid cloud strategy with 90% of them using both on-premises and cloud services. Corporate leaders often view hybrid cloud functionality as critical to future organizational success as it facilitates a company’s digital transformation.

But in their quest to implement a hybrid cloud in their environment, they must exercise caution. Organizations cannot and should not assume “hybrid cloud” constitutes a check box on any product feature list.

The ways in which providers deliver and support hybrid cloud functionality in their products can and do differ significantly. Nowhere can one observe these differences between hybrid cloud capabilities than in midrange hybrid cloud storage solutions.

2 levels of mirange hybrid cloud storage solutions capabilities
At least 2 levels of hybrid cloud capabilities surfaced in the research that DCIG recently completed on midrange storage solutions.  These levels include:

Level #1: tiering data to cloud
Tiering data to the cloud represents the most basic level of hybrid cloud functionality. This represents the baseline functionality that DCIG expects a midrange storage solution to possess to earn the “hybrid cloud” classification.

However, nuances exist to this Level 1 cloud tiering classification. At the most basic level, a midrange storage solution stores data on-premises and tiers aging data to cloud storage. This cloud storage tier often consists of using S3 or S3-compatible storage targets.

Now the nuances of Level 1 cloud storage begin to appear. For instance:

• Some midrange storage solutions offer policies (default or user-defined) that define the time for when aging data gets moved to the cloud.
• Others employ more sophisticated algorithms, to include machine learning, that identify which data gets moved to the cloud and when.
• Some can simultaneously store data to cloud storage on multiple different cloud providers, be they general-purpose or purpose-built.
• Still others give organizations the ability to mix and match these different cloud tiering capabilities.
• This Level 1 classification and its nuances represent the “simplest” implementation of hybrid cloud capabilities on midrange storage solutions.

Level #2: flexibility to move applications between on-premises and cloud
The flexibility to move production applications and data between on-premises and the cloud represents Level 2 of hybrid cloud functionality. Achieving Level 2 almost demands that a midrange storage solution provider offers SDS as an option. This often becomes a necessity for two reasons.

First, an on-premises application when moved to the cloud may not function if it must rely upon data tiered to S3 storage. Granted, an organization can theoretically restore tiered data to production cloud block or file storage. However, the application may not have sufficient time to restore data in this way.  Even if restored, the application may not run, or run as expected, when hosted on the cloud provider’s storage.

Second, few, if any, cloud providers permit a storage provider to deploy its physical storage solution in their cloud. While a few exceptions exist, if an organization wants to recover an application with a cloud provider, it must use the cloud provider’s storage.

To meet this cloud provider requirement, some midrange storage solution providers offer SDS. Using SDS, they can virtualize the cloud provider’s block, file, and perhaps even object storage. Once virtualized, the midrange storage solution provider can then re-present the cloud provider’s storage to the application as its storage.

This serves a few purposes. Many, if not all, storage software capabilities available in the midrange storage solution now become available in the cloud. This permits use of the midrange storage solution’s features such as replication, snapshots, and others. Organizations may then even largely manage the midrange storage solution the same way in the cloud as they do on-premises.

This functionality gives organizations the flexibility to run their applications in a similar manner both in the cloud and on-premises. They may even support failing applications over to the cloud and back again with minimal or no disruption.

2 levels od hybrid cloud midrange storage solution capabilities
Organizations may think they know what hybrid cloud means when evaluating a hybrid cloud midrange storage solution. Be cautious in proceeding with such thinking. DCIG finds that midrange storage solution providers each define and implement hybrid cloud slightly differently.

Their definitions and implementations become imperative to understand as organizations proceed down the hybrid cloud path. If organizations only need Level 1 hybrid cloud functionality from a midrange storage solution, most will deliver on that requirement. It then becomes incumbent upon organizations to verify a midrange storage solution offers the features the organization needs or wants.

However, organizations that want a Level 2 hybrid cloud midrange storage solution should verify it offers SDS. Anything less and achieving objectives such as failover to the cloud and back again in a swift manner become unlikely.