Cloud Storage Pricing

Before we take a look at cloud storage pricing, we first need to understand ideally what cloud storage is. Cloud storage involves subscribing to storage services provided by a cloud hosting company that offers fixed-size server spaces that are used to store data.
Data that is stored in the cloud is located in servers located in data centers that are run by the hosting company. The concept of cloud storage dates back to the 1960s, but it has gained momentum in recent times due to technological advancements that have contributed to improved internet infrastructure.
In today’s world, businesses are edging towards cloud-based storage due to the merits that this platform provides. That said, it is beneficial for a company to find a good deal with regard to cloud storage pricing without compromising on quality. This review will look at cloud storage pricing variables, cloud storage levels, and tips for managing cloud storage costs.

Cloud Storage Pricing: Cost Variables 

Storage Operations Costs 

Storage operations when quantified are very minimal, but when added up, they become significant as a result of performing numerous tasks on high object count workloads. These storage operations include application interface programming (API) actions.

Basic Storage Costs 

These are costs expressed as cost per terabyte or cost per gigabyte stored. These costs vary with different cloud hosting companies. Also, each hosting company has various storage levels that are differentiated by price, performance, and availability.

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Data Transfer Costs 

This is the cost incurred as a result of transferring data to and from the hosting platform.

Bandwidth Costs 

These are exterior costs borne by clients who want to upload data to and from a cloud hosting platform. They involve the price incurred to secure a stable and fast internet connection to upload or download data.

Cloud Storage Pricing: Storage Levels 

Performance Tier 

The performance level is designed with a view of accommodating active data that is highly transferrable. This tier provides the lowest activity costs, the finest accessible service level agreement (SLA), and the lowest latency. This tier is the highest priced with regard to object storage.

Archive Tier 

This is more of a physical library, which means retrieval is not immediate but, at the same time, being the lowest-priced tier. This tier is geared for data that is not accessed on a regular basis but requires long-term storage nonetheless. Recall time can take hours to finalize. This tier has the highest activity costs as a result of the high retrieval time.

Low Touch Tier 

This tier is geared for data that requires instant access. Data stored in this tier usually is inactive. Low touch tier avails to the client instant availability and low latency retrieval times. Storage costs however are small, but the activity costs are quite high.

Cloud Storage Pricing: Tips for Controlling Your Cloud Storage Expenditure 

Understand the Basics 

One crucial undertaking with regard to controlling cloud storage pricing is being able to understand the basics. This means being able to monitor daily and hourly costs based on data from the cloud hosting companies.
You should be able to set notifications when certain cost thresholds are exceeded. It is also crucial also to understand every detail of the bills accrued. This can help you to spot hidden costs that were otherwise not included in previous months

Understand Surges & Anomalies 

Where a cloud hosting client is experiencing surges and anomalies, it is essential that they are able to isolate the root cause of the problem that has resulted in costs that were otherwise not being accrued. One such anomaly is network misconfiguration also known as naked proxies that can result in high network costs.
At times surges in costs may be reasonable and have been budgeted for. A client can shelter minimal surges and anomalies that can arise as a result of increased computer usage, but enormous surges require a different budget altogether.

Fine Tune Your IT Infrastructure

This basically means optimizing the output of both your hardware and software IT components. For instance, if all that a client is doing is transferring their data to the cloud, they are not likely to achieve cloud cost savings.
They won’t also achieve this fete either, if they use multiple cloud hosting services as it is best to stick to one service provider. The solution to all of this is restructuring the hardware and software components, so they economize all the resources used.

Cut Off Worthless Data 

It is vital to get your money’s worth with regard to cloud storage. Storage of worthless and outdated data increases prices on areas that a cloud storage client can otherwise save money on. Identifying worthless data and deleting it from the cloud hosting platform should be done on the regular.

Implement Frequent Audit Capacities 

When it comes to cloud storage services selecting a service provider is not the only thing to do, a client needs to keep track of the storage capacity they require, and this helps them to keep track of their costs so that they do not get out of hand.

Examine Storage Costs 

In most cases, storage use in cloud hosting platforms is calculated by the number of gigabytes or terabytes uploaded multiplied by the period of time the data has been stored. It should be possible to check if the data uploaded is in use to determine if it is needed.
If data is seldom accessed, it should be moved from the active storage level to an inactive level, such as the archive level. This helps to reduce costs because active storage is more expensive than archive storage in most aspects. This practice is very important, but in most instances, it is overlooked.

Cloud Storage Pricing: Conclusion 

To sum it all up, cloud storage pricing is a manageable undertaking, as we have seen above. But like all procedures where finances are involved, you need to have a surplus budget that can be called upon to complement the central budget in case these storage costs exceed the plan.