The growth of cloud block storage: Building blocks in the cloud

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Sue Poremba.

Cloud block storage is a new way of thinking about how you store files and organise content. It allows you to abstract your infrastructure away from the implementation details specifying what hardware and operating system you need to manage to host the files your applications and organisation use.

“Cloud block storage allows organizations to focus on their content and trust the details of delivering that content to an established SaaS provider. It functions like a hard drive accessible via the Internet,” explained Troy Carl, vice president and lead tech engineer with Faith Comes by Hearing, an audio Bible organisation that utilises cloud block storage for its recordings. “Storing files and assets in the cloud is important because it means you have a large amount of flexibility in how you deliver them to your customers and employees,” Carl added. “Not only are the files constantly available, you have the ability to control – at a very granular level – who has access to those files and when they have access.”…

What makes cloud block storage unique is the scale and multi-tenant nature the cloud brings to it, John Griffith, software engineer at SolidFire, pointed out. “Initially cloud storage consisted of lower performing, one-size fits all storage that was best for testor development use cases and custom designed SaaS applications. As storage in the cloud matures we’ll move from using the cloud for just test or development to high-performance mission critical applications.”…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2013/apr/30/the-growth-of-cloud-block-storage-building-blocks-in-the-cloud/