AWS Storage Gateway vs Azure StorSimple
Cloud computing has become an integral part of modern businesses. Companies of all sizes are leveraging the flexibility and scalability of cloud services to optimize their business operations. As more businesses move their workloads to the cloud, the competition between cloud service providers keeps rising.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure are two of the leading cloud service providers currently in the market. In this article, we will compare two of their cloud storage solutions - AWS Storage Gateway and Azure StorSimple.
AWS Storage Gateway
AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that connects on-premises applications to AWS cloud storage. It is designed to help businesses retain their existing on-premises infrastructure and reduce costs by seamlessly integrating with the cloud.
AWS Storage Gateway supports three different storage types: file gateway, volume gateway, and tape gateway. File gateway enables businesses to store and retrieve objects/files in Amazon S3 using standard file protocols, while volume gateway provides organizations with a virtual iSCSI storage volume. Tape gateway offers an automated tape backup solution that stores virtual tapes in Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier.
Azure StorSimple
Azure StorSimple is a hybrid cloud storage solution that offers cloud-tiering for data storage. It allows businesses to store their data on-premises, in the cloud, or in a combination of both. This enables companies to optimize their data management, reduce costs, and improve data availability.
Azure StorSimple can replace traditional storage arrays, backup solutions, and disaster recovery systems. It uses tiered storage to provide optimized performance and cost savings. Hot data is stored on-premises using solid-state disks (SSDs), while cool data is automatically moved to the cloud.
Comparison
Let's compare Azure StorSimple and AWS Storage Gateway in terms of performance, cost, and features.
Performance
Both Azure StorSimple and AWS Storage Gateway offer high-performance cloud storage solutions. However, AWS Storage Gateway offers a faster data transfer rate, with a maximum of 1 Gbps for volume gateway, and 5 Gbps for file gateway, while Azure StorSimple offers 800 Mbps for local capacity and 200 Mbps for cloud capacity.
Cost
AWS Storage Gateway offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, with costs varying based on the data transfer and storage used. The cost of volume gateway starts at $125 per activated gateway per month, and file gateway starts at $30 per activated gateway per month.
Azure StorSimple offers a similar pricing model, with variable costs depending on storage used and the number of devices. The cost of a StorSimple 8010 device with 64TB of capacity starts at $3,995 per device per month.
Features
Both AWS Storage Gateway and Azure StorSimple have different features that cater to different business needs. AWS Storage Gateway offers bandwidth throttling, data compression, and encryption in transit and at rest. It supports Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the environment, and can provide access to AWS services for backups, disaster recovery, or tape archival.
Azure StorSimple offers tiered storage, automatic data tiering, and the ability to migrate data between different tiers. It also offers data protection with cloud-based snapshots, that can restore data to any previous snapshot. You can take granular backup or DR copies of on-premises Windows apps to Azure and protect SQL servers hosted on virtual machines.