Issues and challenges in Cloud Storage Architecture: A Survey

From home appliances to industrial enterprises, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry is revolutionizing the world. We are witnessing the emergence of new technologies (e.g, Cloud computing, Fog computing, Internet of Things (IoT), AI and Block-chain) which proves the growing use of ICT (e,g. business, education, health, and home appliances), resulting in massive data generation. It is expected that more than 175 ZB data will be processed annually by 75 billion devices by 2025. The 5G technology (i.e. mobile communication technology) dramatically increases network speed, enabling users to upload ultra high definition videos in real-time, which will generate a massive stream of big data. Furthermore, smart devices, having artificial intelligence, will act like a human being (e.g, a self-driving vehicle, etc) on the network, will also generate big data. This sudden shift and massive data generation created serious challenges in storing and managing heterogeneous data at such a large scale. This article presents a state-of-the-art review of the issues and challenges involved in storing heterogeneous big data, their countermeasures (i.e, from security and management perspectives), and future opportunities of cloud storage. These challenges are reviewed in detail and new dynamics for researchers in the field of cloud storage are discovered.