10 Benefits of a Cloud-Based Storage Management System

by Chris Preimesberger

Instead of relying on the traditional data center by data center storage management system, with cloud-based management, the global storage environment can be managed from a central service. Regardless of the physical location of information, IT administrators are able to access the cloud-based management service, providing direct access to information to make informed decisions and actions.

New cloud-based applications and APIs offer new integration possibilities that include cloud-and on-premises directory services and cloud-based federated directory services. With cloud-based management, IT organizations can integrate with an on-premises Active Directory environment to manage user permissions to critical information. This allows an administrator to leverage existing access controls, which further simplifies the administrative experience.

The best way to solve a problem is to identify the symptoms before they are fully manifested. Continually monitoring the storage environment and information health in a detailed manor enables the information to be collected and stored in the cloud-based service for heuristic analysis. This often leads to proactive notification and in-depth pattern analysis across the global installed base. This constant pulse on what’s going on in the environment helps give companies peace of mind.

Cloud-based management can provide customers in any location with the most appropriate place to manage their data, making software available for local and global outages. Customers that have location preferences have the flexibility for anyone accessing storage to work from the most appropriate place within the system.

When dealing with disaster recovery, cloud-based management enables IT organizations to effortlessly recover critical data resources from anywhere, using any Web browser, to resume operations rapidly. When properly configured, recovering storage environments can take a third of the time it would take with traditional methods, and the recovery point and time objectives can be minimized.

Traditional storage solutions add the cost and complexity of installing and maintaining yet another server for software. Additionally, VPN credentials are often required for IT organizations to access the dedicated management network remotely. Cloud-managed storage can alleviate these issues. Using this, IT can provide its own authentication while using the cost-saving benefits of cloud storage. All of this can be obtained for about a third of the expense of using a third-party cloud-storage vendor.

With cloud-based management, reporting is available across all storage instances from a single administration dashboard, resulting in global storage visibility for the IT organization. For example, capacity trends, dedupe ratios and the overall health of the system across the global company can all be analyzed on demand.

New features and upgrades can be delivered by the vendor more quickly, frequently and with less disruption to users with cloud-based management. Removing the “Patch Tuesday” burden from IT administrators eliminates the need for the company to schedule outages and dedicated servers with time-consuming software upgrades.

When using cloud-based management, the communication traffic can be secured with common HTTPS. This eliminates the need for firewall ports or email servers to be configured, compared with legacy vendor-specific storage management.

Cloud-based management platforms provide multi-tenant capabilities allowing managed service providers (MSPs) to manage multiple customer environments. With the single platform, MSPs can better monitor, manage and plan storage needs across their customer bases. At the same time, the MSP can ensure customer information is securely isolated and segmented.