Ijettcs 2013 08 24 111
Ijettcs 2013 08 24 111
Ijettcs 2013 08 24 111
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org, editorijettcs@gmail.com Volume 2, Issue 4, July August 2013 ISSN 2278-6856
1. INTRODUCTION
Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. The use of the term cloud in describing these new models arose from architecture drawings that typically used a cloud as the icon for a network. The cloud represents anyto-any network connectivity in an abstract way. In this abstraction, the network connectivity in the cloud is represented without concern for how it is made to happen. Cloud computing is considered as IT revolution. It frees companies or users from large IT capital investments, and enables them to plug into extremely powerful computing resources over the network. Cloud Computing has five essential characteristics On-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and Measured service [23]. Data management applications are potential candidates for deployment in the cloud to get the advantages of using the cloud. This is because the cost of developing large database systems is high in both hardware and software. For many companies especially for start-ups and mediumsized businesses, the pay-as-you-go cloud computing model, along with having someone else worrying about maintaining the hardware and managing the database is very attractive. Traditional approach of storing data locally in the users hard drive is not able to cope with the changing requirements of users who daily deal with massive amounts of digital data, and hence need more scalability, Volume 2, Issue 4 July August 2013
high availability, and optimized resources allocation. It seems to have a limitation on handling such big data volumes and modern workloads. The cloud storage provides the users with all these capabilities and more. Cloud Computing provides an opportunity to store data in Cloud Storage instead of storing it to computers local hard drive. Users do not need to maintain large storage infrastructures. They can store data in remote data centers, controlled and managed by big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon etc. Files saved in the cloud storage can be accessed from any where with any device with an Internet connection. Cloud Storage is an important part of cloud computing. Cloud storage is an online storage available on network hosted by third party vendors. Data is stored on virtualized pools of storage. It is delivered as a service on demand in a scalable and multi-tenant way [10]. Cloud Storage, Data as a service (DaaS) and Database as a service (DbaaS) are the different terms used for data management in the Cloud. They differ on the basis of how data is stored and managed. Cloud storage is a virtual storage that enables users to store documents and objects. Dropbox, iCloud etc. are popular cloud storage services. DaaS allows user to store data at a remote disk available through Internet. A cloud database is a database delivered to users on demand through the Internet from a cloud database providers servers. It can be a traditional database such as MySQL and SQL Server. These databases can be installed, configured and maintained on a Cloud server by the user himself. DbaaS is one step ahead. It offers complete database functionality and allows users to access and store their database at remote disks anytime from any place through Internet [4]. In this paper the two terms cloud storage and cloud database are used interchangeably to refer to the database in the cloud environment. One of the biggest challenges facing web applications is not the lack of computational power but efficiently and resiliently processing of a huge amount of database query traffic [22]. For more than 30 years, relational databases were the perfect storage solution with their impressive capabilities on transactions and queries management. However, storage requirements for the new generation of applications are huge different from legacy applications. Problems start arising once these databases have to become distributed in order to cope with the demands of new applications; they are not designed to scale. Even though relational databases have provided the users with the best mix of simplicity, robustness, flexibility, Page 342
Figure [1] Generalized Architecture of Cloud Storage Volume 2, Issue 4 July August 2013
Figure [3] The Challenges in Developing Cloud Storage Systems Heterogeneous Environment Users want to access diverse applications from different locations and devices such as mobiles, tablets, notepads and computers. Since user applications and data (structured or unstructured) vary in nature, it becomes difficult to predefine how users will use the system. Performance and Data Transfer Bottlenecks Cloud users and cloud providers have to think about the implications of placement and traffic at every level of the system if they want to minimize costs and enhance the system performance. More data shipping means more latency and network bandwidth bottlenecks. These issues reduce database performance badly. Data Portability and Interoperability Data Portability is the ability to run components written for one cloud provider in another cloud providers environment. Interoperability is the ability to write a piece of code that is flexible enough to work with multiple cloud providers, regardless of the differences between them. Currently, there are no standard API to store and access cloud databases. Legacy applications should be Volume 2, Issue 4 July August 2013
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7. Conclusion
Cloud Storage is an important part of cloud computing in which storage is made available to users on-demand and pay-per-usage basis from any where through Internet. There are many open issues regarding the cloud storage. This paper presented a survey on cloud storage. It reviews the main principles of the cloud storage. It presents an overview of the cloud storage architecture and why we need cloud storage. There are still many challenges in the adaption of cloud storage. Scalability and security are the most challenges facing the cloud storage. Cloud storage has the capability to change the whole storage and data backup scenario. It is the future storage.
References
[1] Sakr, Sherif, et al. "A survey of large scale data management approaches in cloud environments." Communications Surveys & Tutorials, IEEE 13.3 (2011): 311-336. Page 348
Figure [4] Taxonomy of Cloud Service Providers Volume 2, Issue 4 July August 2013
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