Transparent Cloud Storage Integration Solution

Download CloudTier Storage Tiering SDK Setup File
Download CloudTier Storage Tiering SDK Zip File

The challenges of the Cloud Storage Connect

Enterprises are increasingly adopting cloud storage options because they need more capacity, elastic capacity and a better way to manage storage costs over time. The growing amount of enterprise data is proving too difficult for IT departments to manage using their data center alone. Migrating and integrating your data storage in the cloud can offer significant value to the business. A cloud storage migration is when a company moves some or all of its local data into the cloud, usually to run on the cloud-based infrastructure provided by a cloud service provider such as AWS and Azure. There are two challenges to connect the cloud storage:

1. Cloud storage migration: the main challenge of the cloud storage migration is how to carry out your migration with minimal disruption to normal operation, at the lowest cost, and over the shortest period of time. If your data becomes inaccessible to users during a migration, you risk impacting your business operations.
2. Cloud storage integration: The biggest challenge of the cloud storage migration for most small to medium size companies is the application redevelopment to adopt the cloud storage, most companies can't afford the expense. CloudTier Cloud Connect provides a complete solution to transparently connect to Amazon S3 storage and Azure storage. Using the cloud storage as second tier can automatically to move data between local and the cloud, so your application doesn't need to do any change, it can access the cloud storage just like the local one transparently.

Integrating Cloud Storage as Second Tier

CloudTier Storage Tiering SDK was implemented with tiered storage file system filter driver. A file system filter driver intercepts requests targeted at a file system or another file system filter driver. By intercepting the request before it reaches its intended target, the filter driver can extend or replace functionality provided by the original target of the request. File system filtering services are available through the filter manager in Windows. The CloudTier tiered storage filter driver can intercept the file I/O to the local storage and redirect it to the remote cloud storage by implementing the file system filtering functionalities which was provided by the Filter Manager framework. With the ClooudTier Storage Tering, you can connect the cloud storage seamless as local on-premise storage, your application can use the cloud storage just like the local storage without the modification.

Automated Storage Tiering

Automated tiered storage (also automated storage tiering) is the automated progression or demotion of data across different tiers (types) of storage devices and media. The movement of data takes place in an automated way with the help of a software or embedded firmware and is assigned to the related media according to performance and capacity requirements. Automated Tiered Storage is a form of Hierarchical Storage Management. CloudTier Cloud Storage Connect is a data storage technique which automatically moves data between high-cost local disk and low-cost remote cloud storage. CloudTier Cloud Storage Connect can help simplify the migration process by providing the transparent file access from the remote storage. Using the cloud as a storage tier, data can first be moved to a ‘warm’ archive tier of higher-performance disk, where it can still be accessed quickly to meet RPO and RTO SLA’s. As you retain archives for longer, older data can then be moved to a ‘cold’ archive tier with better economics. (This is similar to the tiered storage cost/performance model offered by Amazon S3 with its “warm” Standard tier, “cold” Infrequent Access tier and “frozen” Glacier tier.)

Cloud Storage Integration

Our CloudTier Cloud Storage Connect service can connect an on-premise software appliance with cloud-based storage to integrate your existing on-premises applications with the remote cloud storage infrastructure in a seamless, secure, and transparent fashion.There are no interruption to migrate your on-premise files to the remote cloud storage, don't need to change your existing applications and infrastructure.

1. Set up file cloud migration policies based on the file type, file size, file attributes.
2. Create stub file based on the policies after the file was migrated to the cloud storage, it can free up the space from on-premise storage.
3. Transparent the cloud storage access by reading the stub file for your local application.
4. Transparent moving data back from remote cloud storage to the local, re-hydrate the stub file for the recent access file based on the policies.

Amazon S3 Storage Connection

1. Make sure you have a S3 key pair. You will need both the access key ID and the secret access key in order to continue. You can get them from the S3 console website.
2. Select Amazon_S3 cloud provider name. Click "Add Site" button to create a new site for the amazon s3 connection.
3. Put your site name and then enter your access key id and secret access key in the text boxes, choose the region in your setting.
4. Check the enable upload multiple parts box if you want to use parallel upload tasks for a file.
5. Check the enable parallel download box if you want to use parallel download tasks for a file.
6. Set the number of the parallel tasks for upload or download.
7. After filled in all the data, click apply to save the settings.
8. Click test connection to check if your setting is correct.

Microsoft Azure Storage Connection

1. Get your connection string  from the Microsoft Azure Dashboard Portal site, by clicking on the link to the Dashboard website.
2. Select AzureStorage cloud provider name. Click "Add Site" button to create a new site for the Azure storage connection.
3. Put your site name and then enter your connection string in the text box.
4. Check the enable upload multiple blobs box if you want to use parallel upload tasks for a file.
5. Check the enable parallel download box if you want to use parallel download tasks for a file.
6. Set the number of the parallel tasks for upload or download.
7. After filled in all the data, click apply to save the settings.
8. Click test connection to check if your setting is correct.

Cloud Storage Explorer

Cloud Storage Explorer is the tool which allows you to upload and download the data in the cloud. With the cloud storage explorer, you can seamlessly view and manage your files in different cloud storage providers, you can download or upload your files easily using with intuitive interface as below.

Cloud Storage Gateway

Cloud Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage application that connects your local storage to public cloud storage. To connect and manage the cloud storage, we implement a cloud provider class for different cloud providers with below interface, we have implemented all these functionalities for Amazon S3 and Azure Storage with the .NET SDK, you can add more cloud provider code to here.

public abstract class CloudProvider : IDisposable 
{
        public abstract bool GetDirFileList();
        public abstract bool AsyncDeleteFile();
        public abstract bool AsyncDownload();
        public abstract bool AsyncUpload();
        public abstract bool AsyncMakeDir();
        public abstract bool AsyncRenameFile();
        public abstract bool AsyncDownloadDirectoryList();
        public abstract bool IsDirectoryExist(string directoryName);
}