Storage has always been a key aspect of data management in the enterprise. Now, in the era of big data, understanding storage options and technologies has taken on an even greater significance. This glossary offers essential terms that will help you tune up your storage vocabulary.

From the glossary:

Cloud storage
Cold storage is the practice of storing data offline for long-term archival or infrequent access, while still allowing customers to rapidly access this information. Examples include Amazon Glacier, Google Cloud Nearline and the archive tier of Microsoft Azure Blob Storage.

Direct attached storage
Direct attached storage refers to local storage media such as internal or ex- ternal hard drives, flash media and even device-based storage, such as that connected to another system via a USB cable.

Hyperconverged storage
Hyperconverged storage refers to the storage element of an overall concept known as Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). HCI entails a software-de- fined, unified platform bringing together all the elements of a data center, such as compute, networking, management and storage.