Data Storage Management in Cloud Environments

Storage as a Service (StaaS) is a vital component of cloud computing by offering the vision of a virtually infinite pool of storage resources. It supports a variety of cloud-based data store classes in terms of availability, scalability, ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties, data models, and price options. Application providers deploy these storage classes across different cloud-based data stores not only to tackle the challenges arising from reliance on a single cloud-based data store but also to obtain higher availability, lower response time, and more cost efficiency. Hence, in this article, we first discuss the key advantages and challenges of data-intensive applications deployed within and across cloud-based data stores. Then, we provide a comprehensive taxonomy that covers key aspects of cloud-based data store: data model, data dispersion, data consistency, data transaction service, and data management cost. Finally, we map various cloud-based data stores projects to our proposed taxonomy to validate the taxonomy and identify areas for future research.