The first thing to take into account is that consolidating data across different storage systems, both on-prem and in the cloud, can be a complex task, one that may require careful planning and execution. Before you start thinking about how, think about what. It's a good idea to have a clear data management strategy that outlines what data needs to be consolidated, how (and how often/fast) it needs to be accessed, and who needs access to it.
Based on those parameters, and of course budget, you can look for a storage platform that can provide a single point of control for managing your data across on-prem and cloud environments.
If you need flexibility, management options, and, most of all, performance, consider all-flash storage. While generally speaking, these solutions have been more expensive per TB than hybrid solutions with flash and solid-state drives, costs are coming down and the TOC can sometimes be justified through better performance, easier scaling, and simpler maintenance (since you don't have multiple systems and, possibly, multiple vendors to deal with). Hybrid setups will be cheaper up-front, but latency can be an issue, as well as possible issues with compliance and data portability.
Ultimately, it comes down to the best tradeoff you can afford between cost and performance.
Among the AFF solutions out there are a number from Dell, including PowerStore, Unity XT, and PowerMax NVMe. Other popular providers are Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, and HPE 3PAR StoreServ.
There are other directions you can look into, again depending on your needs and budget.
The basic cloud storage services include AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage. They are generally a cost-effective way to store data in the cloud and enable the movement of data between on-prem and cloud environments. They provide some cloud-based analytics and processing capabilities.
Object storage is cloud-based and designed to store and manage massive amounts of unstructured data. It is also very scalable. The drawbacks here are generally lower performance.
And hyper-converged infrastructure is not purely a storage solution, but combines storage, compute, and networking into a single hardware appliance. It is highly scalable and can handle large volumes of data, making it a suitable replacement for SAN and NAS.
Finally (for this overview, at least) software-defined storage uses software to manage storage resources, rather than dedicated hardware. It is highly flexible and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.
If you don't have storage expertise in-house, it may be a good idea to work with an experienced storage consultant regarding potential changes to your data infrastructure.
Flash storage is a data storage technology that delivers high-speed, programmable memory. It is called flash storage because of the speed at which it writes data and performs input/output (I/O) operations.
The first thing to take into account is that consolidating data across different storage systems, both on-prem and in the cloud, can be a complex task, one that may require careful planning and execution. Before you start thinking about how, think about what. It's a good idea to have a clear data management strategy that outlines what data needs to be consolidated, how (and how often/fast) it needs to be accessed, and who needs access to it.
Based on those parameters, and of course budget, you can look for a storage platform that can provide a single point of control for managing your data across on-prem and cloud environments.
If you need flexibility, management options, and, most of all, performance, consider all-flash storage. While generally speaking, these solutions have been more expensive per TB than hybrid solutions with flash and solid-state drives, costs are coming down and the TOC can sometimes be justified through better performance, easier scaling, and simpler maintenance (since you don't have multiple systems and, possibly, multiple vendors to deal with). Hybrid setups will be cheaper up-front, but latency can be an issue, as well as possible issues with compliance and data portability.
Ultimately, it comes down to the best tradeoff you can afford between cost and performance.
Among the AFF solutions out there are a number from Dell, including PowerStore, Unity XT, and PowerMax NVMe. Other popular providers are Pure Storage FlashArray, NetApp AFF, HPE Nimble Storage, IBM FlashSystem, and HPE 3PAR StoreServ.
There are other directions you can look into, again depending on your needs and budget.
The basic cloud storage services include AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage. They are generally a cost-effective way to store data in the cloud and enable the movement of data between on-prem and cloud environments. They provide some cloud-based analytics and processing capabilities.
Object storage is cloud-based and designed to store and manage massive amounts of unstructured data. It is also very scalable. The drawbacks here are generally lower performance.
And hyper-converged infrastructure is not purely a storage solution, but combines storage, compute, and networking into a single hardware appliance. It is highly scalable and can handle large volumes of data, making it a suitable replacement for SAN and NAS.
Finally (for this overview, at least) software-defined storage uses software to manage storage resources, rather than dedicated hardware. It is highly flexible and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.
If you don't have storage expertise in-house, it may be a good idea to work with an experienced storage consultant regarding potential changes to your data infrastructure.