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Storage systems have evolved as the need for them has increased. Nowadays, in the digital age, we store photos, videos, documents, and other personal content in the cloud. This makes all this information accessible from any device and at any time.
Unlike physical storage, such as external hard drives or memory cards, cloud storage is beyond our control as it depends on external services that offer this type of storage. For this reason, it is essential to know what the cloud is and where our files are stored.
How can you find out where the cloud is on your phone?
Although the adoption of these technologies has multiplied in recent years, it has been just over a decade since storage services proliferated. Dropbox, for example, started its successful career around offering us extra gigabytes away from the physical memory of our phones. An innovative way (in 2008) to save files, documents, photos or videos so that it was unnecessary to carry them around, taking up space physically.
As connections improved due to the expansion of fibre in our homes and increasingly faster mobile networks, these services began to reach all kinds of activities that moved all their activity to the cloud.
Where is the cloud in Android?
This storage is done remotely in clouds such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud or Amazon. Companies have understood the importance of always being available to their potential clients and using them to work at all hours.
That is why we use the cloud when we play a movie or a Netflix series. We also use the cloud when we create a new contact on our phone, ask the bank teller for a statement of our account balance, download a book for the Kindle, listen to a song from Spotify, and, of course, rent a hotel room, buy a second-hand item or make a reservation for a restaurant.
Where is the cloud on the iPhone?
Similarly, iPhone users also use cloud services to access and store their information. Apps like iCloud allow Apple users to keep their photos, documents, and other data synchronized and accessible from any Apple device. Additionally, many third-party apps on iPhone use cloud services to deliver functionality, ensuring that information is always available and secure.
How does cloud data storage work?
Cloud storage is based on having all our essential information accessible from any Internet-capable device. This concept allows our photos, videos, text documents, contacts, video games, Internet bookmarks and other files to be available 24/7, 365 days a year.
The cloud offers us the advantage of not having to carry anything physically stored on our devices since all the information is stored remotely on servers. This means we can quickly recover our data from a new device if our device is damaged or lost.
Cloud storage evolved more than 50 years ago with the development of cloud computing in the 1960s. This data storage model across computer networks has allowed businesses and users to store information on massive servers that can be accessed remotely.
Over the years, and with the improvement of Internet connections, these services have expanded and now include a wide range of activities, from file storage to streaming media and performing automatic backups.
Where is data stored in the cloud?
Have you ever stopped to think about where exactly this thing called “the cloud” is? Well, flying servers have not been invented, and much less in the quantities currently required to cover all the needs of a planet with virtually all its most sensitive information virtualized.
The answer is straightforward: in a data centre, or instead, a data processing centre, of which thousands spread worldwide. These are huge surfaces where servers work 24/7, 365 days a year, and are responsible for storing all the information we upload from an application. For example, that photograph you just captured instantly uploads itself to the cloud.
These centres are spread worldwide, leading to the paradox that the same service we have contracted, for example, with Dropbox, stores our images in a data centre in the USA. At the same time, other Word documents have been taken to different continents. Although sidereal distances physically separate them, we will see them on the same screen at a distance as short as our own finger.
To maintain this frenetic activity with billions of requests at all hours, these data centres need a whole battery of security measures to avoid losing everything they store or going out of service. That is why data centres are prepared to make regular backups. Above all, firewalls should be used to avoid problems such as sudden power outages.
Some of these centres have alternative measures in the event of a supply shortage and add third and fourth layers capable of maintaining activity for a reasonable number of hours.
However, think that these data centres are created by something other than the companies with which you contract the services. In most cases, different companies own these data centres and are in charge of the service.
This is the case of Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which, with their brands AWS (Amazon Web Services), Azure Arc and Google, account for almost all of the storage required by companies that send us their information through apps for mobile phones, tablets, computers, consoles, Smart TVs, etc.
Also Read: Cloud Management Systems: How And Why To Choose Them
