Cloud computing is a total environment, where application software like CRM, ERP, servers and storage is hosted by a vendor and a customer purchase the use of either the full application or just compute power.
Cloud Storage is purely a storage service.

•          A Storage service delivered over a network (internet or intranet)
•          Easily scale in capacity and performance.
•          Easy to manage

Customer can use cloud storage in 2 ways:
They may choose to rent storage by the month from a grid service provider. It is a pay-per-use model. This is a public cloud storage service.

Other might want its store data behind its own firewall, managed by its own IT team, but need the flexibility and economics of cloud storage. In this situation the IT department may create a private cloud using technology to deliver a storage service to the internal department over the corporate network. This is a private cloud service.
 

Cloud storage is not:

A primary Tier 1 storage for mission-critical data.
It is not a shared SAN hosted by a GSP.

Cloud storage is:

Solving the exponential growing need to store tier 2/3/4 data. Moving age old data out of primary storage will help solve the need of enterprise.
Cloud storage technology can be a public or private service. The architecture can sit behind an enterprise's firewall, if that is a requirement.

What is the Bio-Mirror Data Site

This is a mirror site from Bioinformatics Center (NUS). This mirror site store common used Bioinformatics data. Users are allowed to use these data and they are allowed to transfer data from this site.
We are allowing any users to access these data without restriction, we hope more organization will have access to these data.
 

Free Usage for trial

We hope to allow customer to test out the features of storing data outside their data center. Once the trial period is over, they can either drop the usage or continue to use the service based on the rate provided.
 
Will anyone be able to sign-up for trials?

Yes, anyone can sign up for this trial. You could either use the FTP protocol to transfer file. If you prefer to use NFS or CIFS you will be provide a a software and could be loaded on any Windows or Linux server.
 

What kind of data is best for Cloud storage?

Cloud storage is good for storing large files (Web2.0 rich media, video surveillance data, large genomic data files, oil-gas data). Both read and write performance is highly scalable.
 

How to manage a Cloud Storage?

The solution is mainly for 2 usages.

1)       FTP account: Customers could FTP file into the volume that is assigned to them.

2)       They could move the files through CIFS or NFS using a software loaded on their Windows or Linux servers.