In this BlogBytes article, the second of the two-part series, we will delve into the nitty-gritty of cloud storage data repatriation so you’re prepared with key decision criteria. This will include a close examination of the surprising economics of repatriating data from the cloud versus storing it on-premises using LTO tape technology. See part 1 of this two-part series, The ins and outs of Cloud Repatriation, here.
CLOUD DATA EGRESS – WHAT ARE THE GOTCHAS?
In the first part of this series, we learned that cloud repatriation is the process of moving data, workloads, or even applications from a public cloud back to on-premises systems. In a paper, ‘The Hidden Economics of Cloud Data Repatriation’ Jon Brown, Senior Analyst at Omdia (formerly Enterprise Strategy Group), explains that “Data storage in the cloud offers many benefits, including the free ingress of data and a low ongoing cost, but cloud data storage also comes with a number of “gotchas”—most notably, surprisingly high egress fees that organizations often overlook when deploying a workload or storing data in the cloud.” Brown cautions that “Cloud providers charge monthly storage fees for API calls, for data access, and to get proprietary data back, especially when an organization needs it in a hurry. In scenarios where large amounts of data need to be moved from the cloud, such as repatriation or restoration after a cyber incident, the layered costs of data egress can come as quite a shock.” Brown calls this the low entry, high exit paradox.
MOVING DATA OUT OF THE CLOUD
Data movement out of the cloud can occur more frequently than one might think. Brown states that, “According to recent research from Enterprise Strategy Group (now part of Omdia), 60% of surveyed organizations reported experiencing unplanned data repatriation within the past 24 months (click to view below)
As noted in the paper, when respondents were asked about their most significant challenges with migrating applications to public cloud providers, meeting cost expectations emerged as the primary concern. Brown relates the story of a gaming company that was hit with surprising egress fees: “When migrating six petabytes of data from AWS S3, a gaming company estimated that it faced staggering egress fees of $250,000 and a $5,000 daily fee for missing its exit deadline. This unexpected cost threatened to add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the company’s already outrageous $3.2 million annual cloud bill.” Brown says the lesson learned is that “Egress fees can create powerful financial lock-in, turning what seems like flexible cloud storage into a potentially costly trap when an organization needs its data back.” Brown outlines the typical cloud fees as follows:
- Internet data transfer fees – These represent the largest portion of egress costs and are charged whenever data moves from cloud storage to external destinations, including downloads to on-premises systems or third-party services.
- Cross-region transfer fees – Cloud providers often impose additional charges when data moves between their different geographic regions, even within the same provider’s infrastructure, adding unexpected costs to multi-region architectures.
- Cross-availability zone fees – Even moving data between availability zones within the same region incurs charges, creating costs for basic redundancy and load balancing that many organizations do not anticipate.
Brown notes that cloud providers typically offer tiered pricing that provides limited relief
WHAT ARE THE COSTS?
According to Brown, some organizations are reporting “egress fees of $90,000 to $120,000 for a petabyte of data egress during a repatriation.”
He notes that, “… these costs are negotiable, especially for larger customers and if the repatriation isn’t a total abandonment of the service provider.” Brown explains that storing massive amounts of data in the cloud can be punitive: “In an example based on the LTO TCO calculator, a company with 1 PB of data in storage and a 10% annual growth in that storage accesses 5% of that data monthly. The company can incur cloud costs of just over $1,000,000 for the storage and access to that data over a nine-year lifecycle. If that data were stored on LTO Ultrium, the total lifecycle cost of ownership for that data would drop by over 91% to $96,007.96, saving the company $109,781.82 in cloud costs annually and $988,036.38 over that same projected nine-year lifetime.”
In the paper, Brown highlights how LTO Ultrium storage systems can offer a cost-effective alternative to cloud storage, including:
- Lower TCO – Tape storage delivers significantly lower TCO over time, especially for long-term data retention where cloud costs compound annually.
- One-time purchase – Unlike cloud’s recurring subscription model, tape infrastructure requires only an initial capital investment, with no ongoing storage fees.
- No egress fees – Organizations avoid the substantial data retrieval costs that cloud providers charge when accessing or moving large volumes of stored data.
- Low energy consumption – Tape libraries consume minimal power when not actively reading or writing, making them significantly more energy-efficient than always-on cloud infrastructure.
In summary, Brown suggests that organizations “Evaluate their current storage profile to identify data that could benefit from on-premises tape storage, particularly infrequently accessed data with long retention requirements … develop a hybrid storage strategy that leverages the strengths of both cloud and tape technologies.”
Brown says the numbers speak for themselves—visit the LTO TCO Calculator to compare. See Brown’s Cloud Repatriation paper here
