Alexis Kestler
If you‘re looking for highly scalable and flexible cloud data storage, object storage should be on your radar. Object storage has become the go-to for modern data lakes supporting analytics, machine learning, archives, backups, and large-scale unstructured data.
In this comprehensive guide as an experienced cloud architect, I‘ll share my insights on the key benefits of object storage, when to use it vs alternatives, top providers to consider, and best practices for leveraging object storage successfully.
Let‘s dive in!
What is Object Storage?
Object storage is a modern approach for storing massive amounts of unstructured data in the cloud. It breaks apart files into flexible objects that can be distributed across servers and data centers.
Here‘s a quick primer on what makes object storage unique:
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Objects, not files – Data is stored in individual objects instead of files in folders. This enables massive horizontal scalability.
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Metadata – Objects contain not just data but customizable metadata like tags to enable fast searches across petabytes of data.
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Global namespaces – Objects are assigned a unique ID to identify them globally across distributed storage.
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REST APIs – Data is accessed through REST APIs instead of filesystem protocols. This enables developing cloud-native apps directly on object storage.
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Durability – Objects are redundantly distributed to ensure durability even with server failures.
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Scale – Object storage can scale to handle exabytes of data across geographic regions.
Compared to traditional file and block storage, object storage offers greater flexibility, limitless scalability, and metadata-driven access ideal for the cloud.
Now let‘s explore the benefits driving adoption of object storage.
Key Benefits of Using Object Storage
What makes object storage so disruptive for the cloud era? Here are 5 major advantages over traditional storage:
1. Virtually Unlimited Scalability
Object storage can scale to handle incredible amounts of data – from terabytes up to exabytes and beyond. Just add more inexpensive servers with local or attached storage.
Without filesystem limitations, capacity can grow to meet needs. This makes object storage ideal for massive amounts of unstructured data like media files, documents, backups, archives, log data and more.
2. Geographic Distribution
Objects can be redundantly stored across multiple data centers and cloud regions to provide geographic distribution. This brings data closer to users and applications for lower latency.
It also adds protection from localized failures. If a data center goes down, objects remain accessible from elsewhere. Object storage enables building globally distributed, resilient data lakes.
3. Metadata Searchability
Object storage diverse metadata helps make massive datasets searchable. Tags and custom attributes can be assigned to each object when created. These can then be used to filter and find specific objects without having to crack open files.
This metadata-driven approach works even with petabytes of data scattered across the world. Object storage lays the foundation for powerful analytics and machine learning on huge datasets.
4. Cost Savings
By separating storage and compute silos, object storage can reduce costs substantially compared to traditional file-based approaches. You only pay for what you need instead of overprovisioning expensive SANs.
Cold data can be moved to cheaper long-term tiers like S3 Infrequent Access or Glacier. The scale-out architecture spreads costs over lower cost commodity infrastructure. For data lakes especially, object storage delivers major TCO reductions.
5. Cloud-Native Support
Object storage works seamlessly with cloud platforms and enables building next-gen cloud-native apps. The REST APIs integrate easily with serverless and other cloud services.
Developers can build apps directly on object storage foundations without needing to manage underlying filesystems or block storage. If you‘re adopting cloud-native architectures, object storage should play a pivotal role.
With these combined benefits, it‘s clear why object storage has become the go-to for massive-scale data lakes supporting analytics, ML, archives, and large media repositories.
Object Storage Use Cases
Now that you understand the advantages, where does object storage make the most sense? Here are the most common use cases:
Media storage – Object storage is ideal for storing massive amounts of media files like photos, videos, and music. Social networks, streaming services, and other media applications run on object storage.
Backups and archives – Low-cost object storage scales cost-effectively to handle enormous backup data and archives that need infrequent access. Tape gets replaced with more accessible cloud object storage.
Data lakes – Object storage readily ingests and consolidates structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data into massive data lakes for analytics and machine learning.
Static web hosting – Objects can directly serve static website assets like HTML, images, CSS and JavaScript files. This removes the need for web servers.
Software builds – Object storage provides cheap, durable storage for artifact repositories used in CI/CD pipelines for DevOps.
Hybrid cloud – On-premises object storage can feed into public cloud systems to enable hybrid scenarios blending private infrastructure with public cloud services.
Database backups – Object storage presents a great backup target for databases and other persistent data given its scalability and low cost.
Internet of Things data – The massive streams of machine data generated by IoT sensors and devices can be cost-effectively ingested into object storage repositories.
Any application dealing with huge amounts of unstructured data should consider object storage rather than more constrained file and block storage options.
Object Storage vs. Block and File Storage
Object storage complements – rather than replaces – block and file storage in modern IT environments. Each approach has advantages for different workloads.
Here‘s an overview of the differences:
| Object Storage | Block Storage | File Storage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access method | REST APIs | Block protocols (iSCSI/FC) | Filesystem protocols (NFS/SMB) |
| Structure | No structure, just objects | Blocks form logical volumes | Hierarchical files/folders |
| Metadata | Per-object | Limited | In filesystem |
| Use cases | Large media, archives, data lakes | Databases, VMs | General file sharing |
| Scalability | Massive, exabyte scale | Limited by array | Thousand terabyte range |
| Resilience | Geo-redundancy across regions | HA within array | Clustered NAS |
As you can see, object storage solves a different set of problems compared to traditional storage. It enables massively scalable, geo-distributed data lakes storing PBs of data.
Block storage provides structured storage volumes for VMs, databases and high-performance applications. File storage enables general purpose file sharing convenient for users.
The best approach is architecting tiered storage with the right technology for each workload. This lets you take advantage of the strengths of block, file and object storage tailored to specific needs.
Top 11 Cloud Object Storage Providers
Many major cloud providers now offer object storage services. Let‘s look at the leading options to consider for your cloud object storage needs:
| Provider | Base Pricing | Locations | Data Resilience | Notable Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS S3 | $0.023/GB/month | Global edge network | 11 9‘s durability | Industry leader, limitless scale, security |
| Google Cloud Storage | $0.020/GB/month | Global edge caches | Geo-redundant | Integrates BigQuery, best for GCP users |
| Microsoft Azure Blob | $0.018/GB/month | Global regions | Geo-redundant | Tiers, blob types, hybrid storage |
| Backblaze B2 | $0.005/GB/month | US, EU datacenters | Replicated | Lowest cost, S3 compatible |
| DigitalOcean Spaces | $0.022/GB/month | Global datacenters | Replicated | Integrated CDN, great docs |
| Wasabi Hot Cloud | $0.0059/GB/month | US, EU, Asia | Replicated | Ultra-low cost S3 alternative |
| Cloudflare R2 | Free tier available | 250+ edge locations | Replicated | Edge computing integration |
| Scaleway | €0.06/GB/month | Europe | Geo-redundant | Low cost, great for Europe |
| Vultr | $0.01/GB/month | 15+ datacenters | Replicated | High-performance, low cost |
| Bunny | $0.01/GB/month | Global POPs | Replicated | Focus on high-performance |
| Tencent COS | $0.024/GB/month | Global regions | Replicated | Good China presence |
Let‘s look at the leaders in a bit more depth.
AWS S3
The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) pioneered public cloud object storage when launched in 2006. It remains the industry leader used by leading cloud-native companies like Netflix and Airbnb.
S3 provides virtually unlimited, highly durable storage that can auto-scale seamlessly. Multiple storage classes are offered from frequent access to glacier archival storage.
S3 leads in features like cross-region replication, fine-grained access controls, event notifications, and query-in-place analytics. For those already on AWS, S3 is typically the first choice.
Pricing starts at $0.023 per GB/month. Network egress and API request costs also apply. Overall S3 sets the standard for enterprise-grade object storage.
Google Cloud Storage
Google Cloud Storage (GCS) offers similar limitless object storage capabilities leveraging Google‘s famously reliable infrastructure.
GCS has a smaller global footprint than AWS but still provides low-latency performance thanks to Google‘s edge caching network. Multiple storage classes are available.
Data is redundantly stored across regions and encrypted by default. GCS delivers strong consistency and integrates readily with other Google Cloud services like BigQuery.
For companies committed to Google Cloud Platform, GCS will often be the simplest choice. Base pricing is $0.020/GB/month. Egress fees apply.
Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
Microsoft Azure‘s object storage option offers robust S3-compatible blob storage for unstructured data.
Azure Storage comes in several tiers from hot, cool, and archive to optimize costs. It replicates data across regions for high resilience. A wide array of storage types are offered for different use cases.
For Microsoft-centric organizations, Azure Blob integrates seamlessly with other Azure services. Hybrid storage with on-prem infrastructure is also supported.
Starting prices are $0.018/GB/month. Microsoft provides one of the most mature enterprise object storage options.
Backblaze B2
Backblaze focuses specifically on high-scale, low-cost cloud storage – originally for backup purposes.
Backblaze B2 buckets store data across Backblaze data centers automatically. A distributed Reed-Solomon encoding scheme provides data resilience.
At just $0.005/GB/month, Backblaze B2 offers storage at almost 1/5th the cost of S3. There‘s also no charge for egress or API requests. For cost-effective scale-out storage, Backblaze B2 is appealing.
Other Providers
Beyond these giants, many providers like Wasabi, DigitalOcean, and Bunny have entered the market with lower-cost S3-compatible object storage options. This competition has been a boon for customers.
Vultr, Linode, Scaleway, and Tencent Cloud also offer more regionally focused object storage starting under a penny per GB/month.
For startups, these lower-cost options often provide "good enough" object storage capabilities to get started. As needs grow, transitioning to the larger providers is straightforward.
Select a vendor aligning with your budget, scale, geographic presence, and integration requirements.
Evaluating Your Object Storage Requirements
The ideal object storage solution depends heavily on your specific use case, data profile, scale requirements and performance needs.
Here are key considerations to factor when selecting an object storage platform:
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Data scale – Project both your initial capacity needs and growth over 3-5 years. Plan how storage will scale seamlessly.
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Resilience requirements – How critical is data durability and availability? Multi-region redundancy provides the highest resilience.
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Access patterns – Will data be frequently accessed "hot" or rarely accessed "cold"? This impacts storage tiering.
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Ingestion volume – How much data will be landing in object storage – GBs, TBs daily? Pick a platform to handle your intake.
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Retrieval latency needs – Do you require millisecond access to objects like a CDN or is occasional batch access fine?
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Geography – Determine where data needs to reside relative to applications and users. Global vs regional availability.
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Hybrid needs – If you have on-prem infrastructure, evaluate options for integrating with object storage across cloud boundaries.
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Security – Understand the provider‘s security model – encryption, access controls, logging, auditing capabilities.
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Network egress costs – These vary and can rack up with high volumes of data transfer out of object storage.
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Budget – Monthly storage and request pricing, network egress fees, and tiering options differ significantly between providers.
By benchmarking options against these requirements, you can zero in on the right platform ready to scale with your Object storage initiatives.
Best Practices for Leveraging Object Storage
Once you‘ve selected an object storage provider, how do you ensure success? Here are my top 7 tips:
1. Start with a pilot – Prove out object storage on a targeted initial use case before expanding. Focus on smooth data ingestion and retrieval.
2. Make objects self-describing – Store metadata to make objects fully searchable without having to open files.
3. Structure keys/naming – Use a clear, hierarchical key structure like customers/users/{user_id}/ to organize objects.
4. Validate data integrity – Checksums ensure correct data transfers into object storage. Test retrieval fidelity.
5. Tune cost tiering – Leverage storage classes like Infrequent Access and Intelligent Tiering to optimize costs.
6. Parallelize transfers – Extract maximum throughput by reading/writing objects in parallel.
7. Utilize lifecycle policies – Save costs by automatically transitioning colder data to cheaper tiers or expiring after a period.
Focus on maximizing value from your initial object store use case. As you master capabilities and best practices, expanding usage becomes much easier over time.
The Future of Object Storage
Object storage has already disrupted traditional data storage. The advantages of limitless scalability, geo-distribution, metadata searchability and cloud-native integration ensure object storage will continue playing an pivotal and expanding role in cloud architecture.
As data volumes explode over the next decade with trends like 5G, IoT sensors, genomics research, autonomous vehicle data and advanced ML, object storage provides the only viable solution for cost-effectively managing these massive datasets.
Expect continual enhancements like more powerful querying capabilities, global file systems layered on object, tighter integrations with cloud analytics services, shared object stores across hybrid cloud deployments and potentially even disaggregated object storage detached completely from regions or providers.
Object storage has clearly emerged as the foundation for next-gen storage. Any organization dealing with continued data growth should embrace object storage now to enable this data-driven future.
Summary
Object storage delivers flexible, exabyte-scale data capabilities not possible with traditional block and file storage. It shines for massive data lakes supporting everything from analytics to archives to media services.
The top cloud providers offer enterprise-grade object storage like AWS S3, Azure Blob and Google Cloud Storage. Innovative startups like Wasabi and Backblaze drive down costs.
Make sure to evaluate options against your specific data scale, access, resilience and integration needs. Follow best practices to launch an initial targeted object storage pilot.
For cost-effectively powering today‘s data-intensive workloads at scale, object storage is the clear choice. The use cases will only continue expanding as data volumes explode in the years ahead.
Hopefully this guide has demystified this transformational cloud data storage architecture. Let me know if you have any other questions!
