Cloud File Storage

Cloud file storage (CFS) is a storage service that is delivered over the Internet, billed on a pay-per-use basis and has an architecture based on common file level protocols such as Server Message Block (SMB), Common Internet File System (CIFS) and Network File System (NFS).

CFS and cloud block storage are the two main types of cloud storage services. (These are akin to the two types of networked storage, NAS or file storage and SAN, or block storage.) Most cloud storage services, including cloud backup services, use a file storage architecture.

Cloud file storage is most appropriate for unstructured data or semi-structured data, such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other file-based data. For applications that may have very large files, such as databases, a block storage architecture is more appropriate to maintain satisfactory performance. Only a handful of cloud storage services offer block storage, however, because the bandwidth required to traverse the cloud would not likely be adequate to maintain acceptable database performance without significant latency.

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Related Terms

Amazon Glacier
Amazon Glacier is a low-cost cloud storage service for data with longer retrieval times offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). See complete definition

backup
Defining what backup is, and the tools and policies to manage it in organizations, comprise a key foundational principle for IT ... See complete definition

secondary storage
Secondary storage is used to protect inactive data written from a primary storage array to a nonvolatile tier of disk, flash or ... See complete definition

file storage in the cloud, free file storage in the cloud
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