Data to the Cloud

Recent hardware failures have helped justify embracing cloud storage. With various providers offering a significant amount of space for a nominal fee, it seems like a no brainer to store my data in the cloud.

There are plenty of cloud storage options available, however when considering cloud storage there are many things to consider when selecting a cloud service provider..

• Data ownership
• Security
• Data location
• Data access and use
• Backup and Maintenance procedures
• Geographic Diversity
• SLA and Support
• Data Transportability
• Business Continuity

CloudCode to the resecue:

Fortunately, to help evaluate cloud service providers New Zealand has CloudCode which is a voluntary disclosure-based Code of Practice that has been developed to improve the standard of services being provided by Cloud Service Providers.

Using CloudCode can help the selection process, and provide piece of mind in the knowledge that you have more knowledge (and hopefully trust) of your service provider.

Ummm, You wanted to upload how much how fast?

Now with a cloud service provider selected, it is time to upload your information to the cloud, and if you select an overseas provider, it may be quite time consuming.

Unfortunately, even in #GigatownDunedin I am unable (currently) to upload at a significant speed to US data centres.  Fibre and gigabit speeds are supposed to be available in my suburb in a few months (plenty of footpaths being dug up around the place), so hopefully that will resolve this issue a little bit.

But in the interim, even uploading 1% (roughly 60GB) of the data I had to restore over the weekend (6TB), would take just under 3 days to upload at these speeds.  Fortunately most of this data would be a one time upload as it wouldn’t be updated often (as in the case of photos and videos), so once the initial process was performed the normal daily updates would be significantly smaller than this, and finish in a more timely fashion.

Things to Consider:

There are many things to consider regarding the cloud service provider, Cloud Code can assist here, however there are also things to consider regarding your own data…

• How much data do I need to store?
• How long will it take to upload it to the cloud?
• How quickly can I download it from the cloud?
• Are there any data sovereignty issues I need to be aware of?
• How much will it cost?

This is certainly not a complete list, but it does provide a basic starting point.

One final Note:

Most cloud storage providers provide methods for you to keep your devices synchronised with your cloud storage.  It is a good idea to consider the ramifications of multiple devices synchronising with your on-line storage, especially if depending on configuration this could potentially mean re-downloading all your data across multiple devices.  This may or may not be the desired result as it may consume a fair amount of bandwidth if left unchecked.

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