What is Native Cloud Tiering and Why Your VNA Needs It

Fujifilm recently released Synapse VNA version 7.5, and with it, introduced a new, innovative feature called Native Cloud Tiering. Healthcare organizations are rapidly exiting the datacenter business for a number of reasons and are looking to cloud storage technologies instead, such as Amazon’s AWS S3, Microsoft’s Azure BLOB storage, and others. However, as the volume and sheer size of medical images continues to grow exponentially, so do their associated storage and access costs.

From a business model perspective, most cloud storage providers have at least three charge points with associated fees:

• Write API transactions: The process of data entering the storage system.
• Read API transactions: The process of data being retrieved by the storage system.
• Timed storage costs: Costs based on volume, such as per gigabyte, terabyte, etc., per month

The above fees will vary based on which storage class or tier your data is stored in and how frequently that data is accessed. For example, the top storage tier will commonly have higher ongoing storage costs, but lower API charges, which is ideal for frequently accessed data. In contrast, lower storage tiers have more modest ongoing storage fees and higher API charges, which is tailored for less frequently accessed data.

We also know that over time, as medical images age, they’re typically accessed less frequently, if not seldom. However, you still need to keep those images for a number of years based on your organization’s data retention policies. And there lies another factor in your ever-increasing storage costs.

The table below contains examples of cloud storage tiers from AWS S3 and Azure BLOB. As you go down the tiers, storage costs go down while API fees go up, incentivizing you to store your least accessed data in the cheapest storage tiers.

The goal of cloud storage tiering is to optimize your utilization (and subsequently, your costs) in accordance with data age and access frequency. To achieve this, it’s critical that your oldest and least frequently accessed data is in the cheapest tier.

With Fujifilm’s Native Cloud Tiering feature released with Synapse VNA version 7.5, we have united Synapse VNA’s patented, clinically intelligent image lifecycle management (ILM) subsystem with cloud storage tiers in AWS S3 and Azure BLOB. As content ages throughout its lifecycle, the Synapse VNA ILM subsystem automatically “moves” content from higher tiers to lower tiers. It does this by reclassifying the content in place via the respective cloud storage APIs without actually retrieving the content from one tier and storing it to another tier. The content never physically moves. It simply gets reclassified.

For example, if it has been over one year since an X-Ray was last accessed, reclassify it from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieve1, or reclassify it from Azure Hot to Azure Cold². To take it one step further, Synapse VNA version 7.5 also introduces an optional disk-based object cache. When enabled, the object cache will contain the most recently accessed images. This further reduces retrievals from cloud storage, and thus, avoids retrieval fees for data in cache.

With Synapse VNA version 7.5 combining its proven image lifecycle management functionality with today’s most popular cloud storage offerings, healthcare organizations can confidently adopt cloud storage technologies while enjoying the cost advantages of storage tiers that use clinically intelligent rules to ensure the right data is placed in the right tier at the right time to optimize savings. Click here to learn more.