Cloud storage is a model of data storage where digital data is stored in logical pools and physical storage that spans across multiple servers and locations. Cloud storage commonly refers to a hosted object storage service, however the term has extended to include other types of data storage that are available as a service, for example block storage. Cloud storage is based on virtualized infrastructure and resembles broader cloud computing in terms of accessible interfaces, elasticity, scalability, multi-tenancy, and metered resources. Cloud storage services can be utilized from an off-premises service or deployed on-premises. Cloud storage is made up of many distributed, yet still synonymous resources, and is often referred to as integrated storage clouds. Cloud storage is highly fault tolerant through redundancy and the distribution of data. It is highly durable through the creation of versioned copies, and can be consistent with regard to data replicas. At a certain scale, management of data operations can become a resource intensive process to an organization. Hierarchical storage management (HSM) systems and data grids can help annotate and report a baseline data valuation to make intelligent decisions and automate data decisions. HSM allows for automating tiering and movement, as well as orchestration of data operations. A data grid is an architecture, or set of services evolving technology, that brings together sets of services allowing users to manage large data sets. Examples of applications that can be deployed with cloud storage characteristics are: Active archive, backups and hierarchical storage management. General content storage and synchronization. An example of this is private dropbox. Data analytics with parallel file systems. Unstructured data store for services. For example, social media back-end storage. Persistent block storage. Operating system and application image store. Media streaming. Databases. Content distribution. Cloud storage peering.