Understanding Cloud Storage: How it Works

As we know, cloud storage is a sub-category of the very complex idea of cloud computing. It’s a service model where data is maintained, managed, and backed up remotely.

The cloud storage service is available to users over the internet. With cloud storage, users can store data on cloud infrastructure servers from anywhere, at any time. The data can also be retrieved from anywhere and at any moment in time.

As shown in the figure, cloud storage architecture consists of user terminals and storage servers. At the simplest level, cloud storage can be thought of as one user and one server. A user can upload data using their terminal to the server.

When a server malfunctions, retrieving data becomes crucial. From a customer or user’s point of view, this type of solution is unreliable. Therefore, to make a cloud storage-based business reliable, hardware redundancy is added to the basic cloud model. Due to this, the redundant system will take over from the normal online system in case of failure. This allows the cloud storage system to function continuously without any problems.

Redundancy of hardware and repetition of data at multiple locations significantly decreases the chance of losing data. Please note that a single data server storing data is good, and ten data servers are a lot better.

Repetition is a concept in which user data is copied and distributed to each server. If data in one server is changed, it will get affected on all the servers. Other than redundant data servers, power supplies are also used as redundant units. With the use of multiple data servers and multiple copies of information, organizations can avoid data loss and server downtime.