Azure Blob Storage vs. Google Cloud Storage vs. Red Hat Gluster Storage

Blob storage is well suited to hosting/sharing zipped files rather than several smaller files, as folder enumeration/listing is not supported. Files uploaded are case-sensitive, so users need to be educated on the correct naming convention format if they are delegating the file-sharing process outside of IT.

Incentivized

[Google Cloud Storage is] great for storing and playing large video files, and even sharing them securely with others, whether or not they are part of your organization. No need to download video files before watching, and can also be used to store any other kinds of files.

Incentivized

GFS is well suited for DEVOPS type environments where organizations prefer to invest in servers and DAS (direct attached storage) versus purchasing storage solutions/appliances. GFS allows organizations to scale their storage capacity at a fraction of the price using DAS HDDs versus committing to purchase licenses and hardware from a dedicated storage manufacturer (e.g. NetApp, Dell/EMC, HP, etc.).

Incentivized

• Ease of use both through Azure Portal as well as API.
• Cost-effective solution for storing a large amount of data compared to other storage solutions.
• Scalability, Security, and Performance are the other key aspects of Azure Blob Storage that are easily manageable through Admin Console.

Incentivized

• Really great, easy to use interface helps us manage files easily. Storage is fast and inexpensive, so we don't have to spin up storage instances locally
• Great set of command-line tools to manage data and storage options via scripts and apps, as well as an SDK means we can build GCS into our orchestration and operations tools
• Robust integration with other Google cloud tools means that we don't have to think too hard about using GCS for a variety of storage tasks as we interact with other Google services.

Incentivized

• Scales; bricks can be easily added to increase storage capacity
• Performs; I/O is spread across multiple spindles (HDDs), thereby increasing read and write performance
• Integrates well with RHEL/CentOS 7; if your organization is using RHEL 7, Gluster (GFS) integrates extremely well with that baseline, especially since it's come under the Red Hat portfolio of tools.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the behavior is nondeterministic (e.g. compare config via UI vs. terraform).
• While it does some things better than S3, the interoperability in a migration scenario seems cumbersome.
• The number of features/config options is overwhelming; we found the docs, etc., a bit hard to read.

Incentivized

• Sometimes we would find advice for how to do something that wasn't documented in the API, although this was very early on.
• When we first started using it, Google Cloud Storage was changing a lot, and some of these changes required us to adapt our code to fit them.

Incentivized

• Documentation; using readthedocs demonstrates that the Gluster project isn't always kept up-to-date as far as documentation is concerned. Many of the guides are for previous versions of the product and can be cumbersome to follow at times.
• Self-healing; our use of GFS required the administrator to trigger an auto-heal operation manually whenever bricks were added/removed from the pool. This would be a great feature to incorporate using autonomous self-healing whenever a brick is added/removed from the pool.
• Performance metrics are scarce; our team received feedback that online RDBMS transactions did not perform well on distributed file systems (such as GFS), however this could not be substantiated via any online research or white papers.

Incentivized

after all of the investment made in the tool and considering how many teams use it I think we would not be likely to move away from this tool. A lot of our information including historical is already here and we are happy with the capabilities of the tool currently

Incentivized

Blob storage is fairly simple, with several different options/settings that can be configured. The file explorer has enhanced its usability. Some areas could be improved, such as providing more details or stats on how many times a file has been accessed. It is an obvious choice if you're already using Azure/Entra.

Incentivized

I would rate Google Cloud Storage’s usability as excellent, particularly for developers. The web console is clean and intuitive for basic tasks, while the CLI tools offer powerful automation. Although navigating IAM permissions has a slight learning curve, the comprehensive documentation and seamless integration with other Google services make it highly efficient.

Incentivized

For performance i give Google Cloud Storage 10 of 10 on performance because even though there are other softwares that do exactly the same thing as Google Drive, it still works exceptionally well. It is very fast, and and far as integration, the only software I have used with it that integrated was Google Docs, and of course it integrates perfectly.

Incentivized

Microsoft has improved its customer service standpoint over the years. The ability to chat with an issue, get a callback, schedule a call or work with an architecture team(for free) is a huge plus. I can get mentorship and guidance on where to go with my environment without pushy sales tactics. This is very refreshing. Typically support can get me to where I need to be on the first contact, which is also nice.

Incentivized

We have never used official support from Google for our Google Cloud Storage, but there is plenty of documentation in place already. With a small amount of work, anybody should be able to get started. Once needs get more complicated, there is still documentation from Google, but also plenty of community support for common use cases around the internet.

Incentivized

overall I was not directly involved but hears the teams were satisfied with the implementation. the teams that used the tool did not encounter major issues, it was as expected with minor issues and bugs that were resolved later. The more significant learning curve was actually starting to use the tool

Incentivized

In our case, Blob storage was not the deciding factor in switching to the provider. It could have been a knockout criterion if Azure had no or an incompatible object storage (key attributes: reliable, cost-efficient, and reasonably fast), because Azure's internal alternatives do not work. As these were fulfilled or even overfulfilled (configuration options), the effort required to migrate was well justified, given the S3-based object storage.

Incentivized

Google Cloud Storage compares very similar to Dropbox. The difference of using Googe Cloud Storage is that it is part of a big bundle of products that you are probably already using. If you are a big Google user then it would make sense to get Google Cloud Storage. This way you can have all of the tools you need under one roof. I selected Google Cloud Storage because I was already using Google's other products and I was very impressed by those products so it was an easy sale.

Incentivized

Gluster is a lot lower cost than the storage industry leaders. However, NetApp and Dell/EMC's product documentation is (IMHO) more mature and hardened against usage in operational scenarios and environments. Using Gluster avoids "vendor lock-in" from the perspective on now having to purchase dedicated hardware and licenses to run it. Albeit, should an organization choose to pay for support for Gluster, they would be paying licensing costs to Red Hat instead of NetApp, Dell, EMC, HP, or VMware. It could be assumed, however, that if an organization wanted to use Gluster, that they were already a Linux shop and potentially already paying Red Hat or Canonical (Debian) for product support, thereby the use of GFS would be a nominal cost adder from a maintenance/training perspective.

Incentivized

• Azure Blob has reduced our overall infrastructure cost.
• With Azure Blob Storage, we don't need dedicated personnel to maintain storage and its related infrastructure.
• Azure Blob Storage provides a one-stop storage solution for most of our business needs, allowing us to focus solely on the business.

Incentivized

• It allows the use of large Big Query data sets, this enables better data analysis.
• It helps the business maintain a central storage solution for data.
• Secure and easy to learn and use, it allows for fast adoption which improves productivity.
• It does not enable collaboration and has limits on flexibility.

Incentivized

• Positive - Alignment with the open source community and being able to stay abreast of the latest trending products available.
• Positive - Reduced procurement and maintenance costs.
• Negative - Impacts user/system maintainer training in order to teach them how to utilize and troubleshoot the product.

Incentivized