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Object Storage vs Block Storage Services

Table Of Contents


    ## Table of Contents

    – [Introduction](#introduction
    – [Block Storage](#block-storage
    – [Object Storage](#object-storage
    – [Conclusion](#conclusion

    ## Introduction

    Data Storage is a baseline requirement for most of the applications and services. Because data storage requires flexibility and scalability. It is developed with modern techniques and tools. If you want to store a large amount or small amount of images, videos application developers need a solution for the storage and retrieval of user-generated content, backups etc.

    Nowadays, complex deployments, large infrastructure came into work, so there is no use of the single server for saving files to disk. Now cloud providers are providing large storage for modern application deployments.

    They are two types.

    ### Block Storage

    ### Object Storage

    ## Block Storage

    Block storage provides a traditional block storage device like a hard drive over the network. With block storage, files are split into evenly sized blocks of data. Each block has its own address but with no additional information to provide more context for what that block of data is. It has several advantages.

    ## Advantages

    People and Software can easily understand block storage and support files and filesystems.

    Block devices are easy to understand. Every programming language can read and write files easily.

    Access controls and Filesystem permissions are well understood.

    These devices provide low latency IO, That’s why they are suitable for use by databases.

    ## Disadvantages

    Storage is with one server at a time.

    Payment for all the block storage space you have been allocated, Even though you are not using it.

    Blocks and filesystems have limited metadata.

    Through running server only, you can access block storage.

    It needs more work and setup.

    ## Object Storage

    Object storage also called object-based storage, is a computer data storage architecture that manages data as objects, as opposed to other storage architectures like block storages. Each object typically includes the data itself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier. Object storage can be implemented at multiple levels, including the device level, the system level, and the interface level.

    In each case, object storage seeks to enable capabilities not addressed by other storage architecture, like Interfaces that can be directly programmable by the application, a namespace that can span multiple instances of physical hardware, and data-management functions like data replication and data distribution at object-level granularity.

    Object-Storage systems allow the retention of massive amounts of unstructured data. It is used for purposes such as storing photos on Facebook, songs on Spotify, or files in online collaborations services as Dropbox.

    ## Advantages

    A cost-effective structure, Means you have to pay for what you use.

    It can able to store a large amount of metadata as well as your data blob can simplify your application architecture.

    You don’t need to maintain hard drives and RAID arrays, As they handled by the service provider.

    You can retrieve old versions of objects to recover from accidental overwrites of data. This is called the Optional Version.

    A built-in public serving of static assets means one less server for you to run yourself.

    ## Disadvantages

    Object Storage services can’t be used back like a traditional database, due to high latency.

    OS cannot easily hold an object store like a normal disk.

    There are some clients and adapters to help with this, But generally using and browsing an object store is not as easy as flipping through directories in a file browser.

    In the Object store, you have to read and write the whole object once.

    This has some performance issues. For example, In a filesystem, you can easily add a single line to the end of the log file. In the object storage system, you have to retrieve the object, add the new line and write the whole object back.

    ## Conclusion

    In this guide, we have described the differences between Object Storage and Block Storage.