Cloud storage is a model of data storage that stores digital data 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 also includes other types of data storage that are available as a service, for example block storage. Cloud storage runs on virtualized infrastructure and resembles broader cloud computing in terms of accessible interfaces, elasticity, scalability, multi-tenancy, and metered resources. You can use cloud storage services from an off-premises service or deploy on-premises. Cloud storage consists of many distributed, synonymous resources, which are 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 large scale, management of data operations is a resource intensive process for an organization. Hierarchical storage management (HSM) systems and data grids help annotate and report a baseline data valuation to make intelligent decisions and automate data decisions. HSM enables automated 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 enabling users to manage large data sets. Example applications deployed with cloud storage characteristics: 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.