CloudTier Storage Tiering SDK Component

4.48/5 (364 Reviews)

CloudTier Transparent Storage Tiering SDK provides you a simple solution to develop cloud archiving application, integrating on-premise application with cloud storage seamlessly, implementing transparent cloud storage access software with demo code.

Development And IT Coding Utilities Shareware
FREE DOWNLOAD (v3.2.1.1)
File Size: 2.90 | Safe & Verified

Key Features of CloudTier Storage Tiering SDK

  • CloudTier Transparent Storage Tiering SDK provides you a simple solution to develop the cloud archiving software, it allows you to integrate your existing on-premises applications with the remote cloud storage infrastructure in a seamless, secure, and transparent fashion.
  • The cloud tiering is a data storage technique which automatically moves data between high-cost on-permise storage and low-cost remote cloud storage, it provides a native cloud storage tier, it allows you to free up on-premise storage capacity, by moving out cooler data to the cloud storage, thereby reducing capital and operational expenditures.
  • Cloud archiving is the process of moving data to secondary storage in the cloud, the potential benefits of cloud archiving includes lower costs and easier access, no interruption and change to your existing applications and infrastructure.Cloud storage tiering can be widely used in telecommunications, government, oil, medical and other industries.
  • Tiered storage is the first choice of medical PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System, medical imaging storage and transmission systems), a lot of data in such applications are rarely visit, these data are transferred to a less expensive network storage.
  • When users and applications access the stub files in the local storage, it is completely transparent, the system will automatically restore the data back to the stub file from the remote storage server.
  • The network attachedstorage is scalable, tiered storage products provide users with an infinite online data space.

How to Implement Cloud Storage Tiering

The CloudTier SDK allows you to offload local files to the cloud without changing how users access them. Follow these steps to set up your Tier 0 (Hot) and Tier 1 (Cold) storage:

  1. Migrate Files to Cloud Storage
    Before creating a placeholder, upload the original file content to your cloud provider (e.g., Amazon S3 or Azure Blob). Ensure you maintain a mapping of the local file path to the cloud object URI.
  2. Create a Stub File
    Use the CreateStubFileEx API to replace the local file with a "Stub." This placeholder retains all original metadata (size, dates, permissions) but consumes nearly zero disk space, appearing to the user as a normal file.
  3. Register the Read Callback
    In your application, subscribe to the OnReadFile event. This event triggers automatically whenever a user or application attempts to open a stub file, signaling that data needs to be recalled from the cloud.
  4. Handle Real-Time Rehydration
    When the callback is triggered, your code should fetch the requested data chunks from the cloud and pass them back to the driver. The driver then presents this data to the requesting application seamlessly, without the app ever knowing the file was remote.
Pro Tip: You can implement "Partial Reading." If a user only needs to see the first page of a 1GB PDF, your callback can fetch only the first few megabytes from the cloud, saving bandwidth and improving response times.

Frequently Asked Questions

A Stub File is a sparse file with a reparse point. It contains the metadata of the original file but none of the actual content. For example, a 10GB video file can be reduced to a stub that takes up only 1KB of local disk space.

Yes. The tiering process is transparent. Applications interact with the stub file just like a local file. The CloudTier driver intercepts the access request and fetches the data in the background, so no application changes are required.

If the cloud cannot be reached, the OnReadFile callback will fail to return data. You should handle this in your application by returning a file-system error code, which will result in the user seeing a standard "Network error" or "File unavailable" message.

Yes. While the SDK provides the tools to create stubs and recall data, you can easily build a "Scan Service" that monitors file access times. Once a file hasn't been touched for 30 days, your service can automatically trigger the migration and stubbing process.

Technical Specifications

CloudTier Storage Tiering SDK Screenshot

Screenshot of CloudTier Storage Tiering SDK: Data Management