5 Common Cloud Storage Problems and How To Solve Them

Cloud, cloud computing, cloud storage are some of the terms that are thrown around so often that you actually tend to think whether all the hype surrounding cloud is justified or it is just a bubble that is about to burst. When you see businesses migrating their complete infrastructure to the cloud, you think I is not a fad.

When you dig a little deeper, you came to know that the cloud has many advantages which your business can benefit from. You decided to take the leap to the cloud without realizing that it also has its disadvantages. If you have already switched to the cloud and are facing common issues then, this article is for you.

In this article, you will learn about the common cloud storage problems and how to iron out those issues to harness the power of the cloud.

• Choosing the Wrong Cloud Hosting Provider

When searching for a cloud hosting provider, you might be tempted to get the latest and greatest. Yes, I am looking at you Microsoft Azure and AWS. Do you really need the latest and greatest? The answer will most probably be No. Assess your business needs and choose a cloud provider accordingly.

To help you make the right choice when it comes to cloud service provider, here are some of the factors you should take into account before signing on the hosting packages

• Data accessibility
• Pricing structure
• Industry specialization
• Relevant Experience
• Downtime history

Choose a cloud service provider that has the relevant experience and understands your industry needs better. Compare prices offered by different cloud storage providers and look at their plans. Do they charge you fixed rates, or their charges varies? Will they charge you for migrating data from one place to another? What they are offering at what price? Don’t forget to check out the downtime history, more on that later. Another important consideration that you can not afford to ignore is the bandwidth of their data centers. 

• Downtime

As a business, you don’t want to see downtimes but there are instances where you must deal with it. As mentioned above, you should closely analyze the downtime history of the cloud service provider you are planning to hire. This will give you a clear idea about how reliable their service is. More importantly, ask about their customer support and check how good it is before making the deal official as you have no choice but to call them to ask when the issues will be fixed during the downtime. 

 Don’t take the word of cloud providers as most of them make tall claims but only a handful of them back them up. That is where a service level agreement comes into play. Make sure you read the service level agreement carefully and get it signed by the service provider. Add a clause where the cloud provider will have to pay you back in case of a downtime. Keep monitoring your SLA overtime. If you company breaches the service level agreement, you should take them to task.

• Ignoring Connectivity

Even if you have the advanced network in your company’s data center that does not mean that you should ignore connectivity and bandwidth altogether. Let’s say your data centers are running at 10-100 Gbps and 100 Mbps to 1Gbps for rest of the company but when it comes to internet connectivity, you will get internet speed of 10 to 100 Mbps and even that can be asymmetric. 

This means that the upload will be much slower, hence takes longer as compared to downloads. Although, you can resolve this issue by using cloud storage gateways and WAN optimization appliances, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Remember, if the bandwidth to the cloud provider is low, you will get below average performance and could not fully take advantage of potential benefits cloud has to offer.

• Security and Privacy

Security and privacy have always been the weakest link for cloud computing for years and hindered its wider adoption. One of the major concerns in the mind of business owners who want to migrate to the cloud is security and privacy of their data. 

Even though cloud storage vendors have done their bit to keep your data safe from prying eyes, hackers are always one step ahead at exploiting vulnerability of cloud systems and get access to data. This is the reason why we frequently hear and read news about data breaches in the cloud. 

Enhanced accessibility is a big advantage of cloud storage, but it also makes your data more vulnerable to security attacks. With your data accessible from anywhere, data breach through hacking can occur and will compromise your sensitive business data so you need to be wary of these things when moving your data to the cloud.

There are still cloud security challenges that need to be dealt with before we can see cloud storage as a safer option for storing private data. If you are migrating your business infrastructure to the cloud, you will have to wait for cloud storage security issues to be ironed out. 

• Data Backup and Migration

Another common problem associated with cloud storage is slower data backup and restore. Add to that the inflexibility of cloud apps and it makes matters worse. Furthermore, managing data in the cloud can be tedious as cloud storage systems have their own structures. Your current data storage system might not support, integrate or align with the cloud vendor’s system. 

Some cloud storage providers will charge you for migrating data so be aware of that. Secondly, you cannot just upload a document created using another software directly into a Google Docs spreadsheet with cloud storage as you can do with traditional storage. Some vendors will offer access to proprietary hardware and software to overcome this issue but that will add to their overall costs. This is a common tactic cloud providers use to stop customers from switching to another cloud provider.

You can also check for The Emotional Computer Brisbane if you face problems related to your computer.

Which is the biggest issue you have ever faced with cloud storage? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.