Breaking down the costs of cloud storage

Deal with a truckload of data

Even though the cost of data ingress for most cloud storage services is free, the time required to transfer multiple terabytes of data across the internet can be prohibitive. Few organizations possess the bandwidth needed to do this. And recovering large-scale data sets from a cloud provider through the internet can be equally prohibitive.

Some organizations skirt around large data transfers by opting for physical disk-handling services. The idea is surprisingly low-tech: Just ship a disk containing the desired data to the cloud provider, and the provider will copy the data from your disk to a suitable storage instance. Alternatively, the provider can copy your desired data to a disk or storage appliance and ship the data to you.

The prices for these services typically involve only a modest per-disk handling fee, but any regular data storage transaction charges will also apply. Two common examples of this service include Microsoft Azure's Import/Export service and the Snowball service from AWS.

Reduce the costs of cloud storage

Cloud providers offer a suite of online, nearline, offline, archive and other storage types, so select the service that suits the needs of your application. Infrequently accessed and archival storage services can be more cost-effective for backup or long-term archiving tasks.

Also, make sure to meet any minimum retention periods. For example, some storage services may require a minimum billable service period of 30 days -- this is common for archival storage services. If you only to use the storage instance for a few days, it may be more cost-effective to use a different service with no minimum billable period, even if the actual storage type is more expensive.

Look for thin-provisioning characteristics. If you must predefine the maximum capacity for a storage instance, be sure that you're only billed for the amount of capacity you use, not the total amount provisioned. But, remember, some high-end services, such as the Azure Premium Storage service, may bill for the entire allocation from the start.

Any form of public cloud adoption, including for storage, should include well-defined policies that outline the and lifecycle of cloud resources. Monitoring tools, such as those offered by the cloud providers, can help administrators oversee public cloud usage and expenses, rein in excess usage and expedite the removal of older, unused instances.

Unnecessary cloud storage continues to rack up charges every month, so delete data you no longer need -- but, remember, some archival services impose minimum monthly fees or early deletion costs.

Lastly, minimize data movement. Don't use public cloud storage as a primary backup location -- moving huge amounts of data out of cloud storage can impose huge costs. Local data deduplication can help, too, lowering the storage capacity required. Consider redesigning applications to minimize interactions and to lower the costs of cloud storage.