Until very recently, storing data that your business uses constantly meant using locally positioned data centres accessed over a LAN, but software platforms and data transfer speeds over WANs have changed dramatically and that’s affecting the way businesses use data centres. The question is whether all progress is good progress or should we still look to locally stored and accessed data for increased reliability or are cloud servers the most functional option?
There are arguments for both technologies and in some cases, the marriage of NAS drives accessible over both LANs and WANsare the obvious solution for businesses, but using such a system will nullify some of the benefits. For example, a NAS drive that is only accessible to in-house staff on a network that has zero or very limited access to outside networks is considered more secure, but allowing access over a WAN will remove that security feature.
A NAS drive would function over a local network that allows data access to function more quickly than having to transfer data across a WAN such as the internet or a private Intranet, but what happens when you need to access the data from more than one location?
The Stability Factor
If your business handles sensitive data or your business is classed as a data controller, then you need to consider how your data is stored and accessed. Buying hardware from a reliable supplier is your first step because data is often the most valuable asset you have and it is hard to replace so choose a known supplier. A
Dell cloud server or
NAS servers from Dell are much more likely to operate with stability than storage devices
put together by third parties with OEM components and using cooling systems that may or may not be up to the job.
Data Security and Cloud versus NAS Storage
The truth is that your hardware is always going to be secondary to your storage system design when it comes to data security. It’s almost impossible for any business to operate today without some access to data online so it doesn’t matter whether your data is stored locally on a NAS drive or remotely on cloud servers, security is like a chain and hackers will always find entry to a network through the weakest link.
The hardest concept to accept is that data security for managed servers is often far greater than in-house managed data centres because providers of managed cloud servers rely on their security systems as their main selling point as much as data access and transfer speed. One of the most obvious reasons to use cloud storage above NAS is the fact that so many of the applications we use the data for takes places in the cloud anyway and the trend is increasing despite data security concerns of small businesses as outlined
here. Essentially, that means businesses will need to spend less on capital expenditure for
hardware and more for service charges, so it makes sense to host data in the cloud wherever possible.
Being part of the Dell team, I know we have a great range of NAS servers and Cloud solutions available, which can be found on our site. Visit the site and browse the solutions on offer.
