What is Cold Storage?

Cold storage is where you archive data that is important and potentially needed in the future. Data in cold storage is no longer in constant use. Cold data storage is where data rests securely for future use.

How do I get at my data?

Your data is accessible through a standard S3 interface. If your app, workflow, data architecture supports S3 Glacier then you are ready to use Cloud Cold Storage. (GCP, Azure and Oracle interfaces coming soon).

As the name suggests, Cloud Cold Storage is not hot data storage. Data will be streamed back at high speed once ready, typically in just a few mins.

What’s the different between archiving with hyperscalers and Cloud Cold Storage?

In current cloud archive technologies employed by hyperscalers, they are servicing multiple tenants and workloads, writing data in parallel to a disk caching layer. This activity is optimised for data write operations. Data for every workload, client, tenant is spread across lots of different media, designed for efficiently moving data off expensive hot storage, this method is incredibly inefficient way of retrieving data, as it takes a long time to bring all the diverse medias back online to reproduce the requested dataset.

With Cloud Cold Storage, each customer, tenant or workload has its own dedicated media. Simply put this makes it extremely efficient for reads, once the dedicated media is ready, it can quickly stream the dataset back, TB’s of data can be retrieved in a matter of minutes rather than days.

Does your company compete with AWS Glacier, Azure Blob or GCP Archive Storage buckets?

Cloud Cold Storage (CCS) is similar to other global cloud storage offerings - it offers long-term cloud storage without the need for specialist skills, but it is unique in that it’s really good for reading data, so your data is ready to use when you want it, without delay and with seamless S3 integration.

You also only pay a super low cost to store your data -  $1.55 per TB, there are no extra surprise charges such as restore and egress fees, so you can budget your capacity.

Unlike the other archive offerings, your data is stored on its own dedicated media, which is not powered when not in use, reducing your carbon footprint and providing a secure air gap to safeguard your data from ransomware attacks.

How can you be cheaper than AWS S3 Glacier, GCP Archive or Azure Blob?

Simply put, our data centres are optimised for long term archiving, everything from the power and cooling, through to the archival technology and media. Our data centres have minimal processor and caching overheads, and therefore minimal power and cooling requirements, so we can store data at a fraction of the cost of data centres designed and optimised to service the ever growing power hungry demands of compute.

How come you are so power efficient?

When data is stored with Cloud Cold Storage it is not spinning or powered as it would be with standard cloud storage, media is stored in a restful location until you require it, only then is it brought back online.

This eco-friendly approach safeguards your data and contributes to a greener, more sustainable future. Embrace the power of cloud based cold storage to protect your data and the planet simultaneously.

Do you have any real-world examples?

Splunk uses the service to archive logs and stay ahead of compliance requirements.

Companies like Milestone can simplify the storage of their video data collection for schools, private businesses, and security companies.

Can you illustrate a use case for me?

Let’s say you are a researcher at a university with petabytes of scientific research created by running many expensive experiments. Managing petabyte data sets on your own spinning or flash disk eats into research budgets at an alarming rate. Moving that data into the cloud reduces the need for specialist media management skills but still means it is spinning on someone else's disk and then you’ll get stung when you need to read that data back.

With Cloud Cold Storage (CCS), we can store each of your scientific datasets on its own media, which will be offline while not required.

From there, researchers can seamlessly use Amazon S3 browser or Cyber Duck to upload and download data effortlessly, freeing them to focus on their research rather than mundane data management.

Will Cloud Cold Storage work with my storage software?

In addition to supporting S3 Browser with private buckets. We also support Veeam, Cohesity, Cyberduck, and other storage softwares and workflows will be supported too.

Who do you partner with?

We partner with Digital Realty, a global leader in enterprise data centres with 300+ in 50+ global metros, 5,000+ global customers and more than a decade of 99.999% uptime, and Spectra Logic with over 40+ years heritage in archival storage equipment manufacturing for organisations such as CERN, HPE, AWE, and the Geyser storage platform which provides the super simple S3 interface to your data and was named in the CRN 10 hottest data storage start ups of 2024 in the US.

When you register your account you will receive an email from Geyser. When you store your data it will be on Spectra Logic equipment securely in a Digital Reality Data Centre.

This maybe a new cloud cold storage offering, but it is backed by the best in the industry to ensure your data is secure for the Long haul.

What is Cloud Cold Storage in a nutshell?

Cloud Cold Storage is a simple-to-use, low-cost, secure, cloud-based archiving bucket, meaning you can store huge amounts of important data for the long haul at a fraction of the overall cost associated with other offerings.

Did we answer your question?

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