Articles, Glossary Terms, Discussions, and Reports to expand your knowledge on Object Storage Solutions
Resource pages are designed to give you a cross-section of information we have on specific categories. You'll find articles from our experts, feature definitions, discussions from users like you, and reports from industry data.
What’s the difference between object storage vs. block storage?
Object storage stores data as complete objects and works best for large-scale, unstructured data. Block storage splits data into addressable blocks and is well-suited to low-latency workloads like databases and VMs. Choose based on your workload: use object storage for scale and block storage for frequent, granular data access.
Determining the best way to store valuable information and important files takes time and effort. You have so many options for stashing files for easy retrieval later. Knowing which data storage devices to pick ensures long-lasting data protection, but the choices are endless.
Think of watching a movie or TV series on a streaming platform. When using streaming platforms, global users stream or locally store large multi-gigabyte (GB) media files simultaneously. Object streaming is what happens in the background when doing so. Each TV series or movie is stored either as a splitted object or a mounted range of objects. And the way they are stored is a classic example of object storage.
Integral to disaster recovery, online backups copy data to an off-site or cloud location. Learn how online backups work, their benefits, and drawbacks.
A disk backup is a copy of data files stored on a disk. Learn how to use disk backups as part of a data recovery plan, its benefits, and disadvantages.
In one of my use case I integrate GCS with Tonkean, so it possible to that I integrate it with any other tool?
Google Cloud Storage (GCS) is designed to integrate easily with a wide range of tools and services, both within the Google Cloud ecosystem and beyond. Here are some of the ways you can integrate GCS with other tools:
GCS provides a simple and powerful RESTful API that allows you to programmatically manage and access your storage resources. This API is supported by a variety of programming languages, including Java, Python, and Go.
GCS also integrates with a wide range of third-party tools and services, including data processing tools like Apache Beam, Apache Spark, and Apache Hadoop, as well as analytics and business intelligence tools like BigQuery and Looker.
GCS integrates with Google Cloud's Identity and Access Management (IAM) service, which allows you to define fine-grained access controls and permissions for your storage resources.
GCS also integrates with other Google Cloud services, such as Google Cloud Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, and Google App Engine, which allows you to build and deploy cloud-based applications that utilize GCS for storage.
Overall, the integration options for GCS are extensive and flexible, making it easy to integrate with other tools and services to build a comprehensive and powerful cloud-based storage and data management solution.
Answered: TrustNoOne Danicska on February 15, 2023
Sticker price per gigabyte rarely tells the whole story once egress fees, retrieval charges, and management overhead enter the picture. Real G2 reviews point to a few object storage platforms built specifically around lowering that total cost at scale:
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage (4.6★, 114 reviews, G2 Grid Leader): Reviewers consistently cite transparent, predictable pricing with free egress well above what competitors offer, and several specifically call out moving off S3 to cut costs without giving up S3-API compatibility. The honest caveat: a few reviewers note the web interface feels dated and canned support responses can be a pain point when something goes wrong.
Amazon S3 Glacier (4.5★, 139 reviews, G2 Grid Leader): Built specifically for low-cost archival at scale, and reviewers confirm it drives down long-term retention costs while keeping AWS-native integration. The recurring tradeoff is that retrieval timing and pricing tiers can get confusing, and data isn't available instantly.
Cloudian HyperStore (4.7★, 13 reviews, G2 Grid High Performer): Worth flagging this is a thinner review sample, but reviewers managing large research and enterprise datasets specifically describe moving to it for predictable costs and reduced cloud storage spend versus public cloud, via its on-prem, S3-compatible hybrid architecture. A couple of reviewers note the interface and reporting could be more intuitive.
For workloads at real scale, does an on-prem or hybrid S3-compatible platform actually beat public cloud storage on total cost, or does the operational overhead of running it yourself eat those savings?
The savings are usually real but they shift the cost rather than eliminate it, hardware and staff time to run a hybrid setup replace the egress fees you'd pay in public cloud. Whether that trade actually wins out probably comes down to whether a team already has the ops capacity to absorb that work, versus paying a cloud vendor to handle it for them.
Sticker price per gigabyte rarely tells the whole story once egress fees, retrieval charges, and management overhead enter the picture. Real G2 reviews point to a few object storage platforms built specifically around lowering that total cost at scale:
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage (4.6★, 114 reviews, G2 Grid Leader): Reviewers consistently cite transparent, predictable pricing with free egress well above what competitors offer, and several specifically call out moving off S3 to cut costs without giving up S3-API compatibility. The honest caveat: a few reviewers note the web interface feels dated and canned support responses can be a pain point when something goes wrong.
Amazon S3 Glacier (4.5★, 139 reviews, G2 Grid Leader): Built specifically for low-cost archival at scale, and reviewers confirm it drives down long-term retention costs while keeping AWS-native integration. The recurring tradeoff is that retrieval timing and pricing tiers can get confusing, and data isn't available instantly.
Cloudian HyperStore (4.7★, 13 reviews, G2 Grid High Performer): Worth flagging this is a thinner review sample, but reviewers managing large research and enterprise datasets specifically describe moving to it for predictable costs and reduced cloud storage spend versus public cloud, via its on-prem, S3-compatible hybrid architecture. A couple of reviewers note the interface and reporting could be more intuitive.
For workloads at real scale, does an on-prem or hybrid S3-compatible platform actually beat public cloud storage on total cost, or does the operational overhead of running it yourself eat those savings?
The savings are usually real but they shift the cost rather than eliminate it, hardware and staff time to run a hybrid setup replace the egress fees you'd pay in public cloud. Whether that trade actually wins out probably comes down to whether a team already has the ops capacity to absorb that work, versus paying a cloud vendor to handle it for them.
