News

posted on 28 April 2008 18:05

Nirvanix is making a stunning debut in the ranks of cloud storage storage service suppliers and has snagged a Fortune 10 rank customer. It doesn't get any better than that.

Nirvanix offers storage on its Storage Delivery Network (SDN), a global network of nine inter-connected data centres implementing, literally, a global name space capable of scaling to to the storage of multi-multi-petabytes of data according to chief marketing office Jonathan Buckley.

This is implemented by the company's Internet Media File System (IMFS). The SDN can move files around the datacentres so that they are located close to customers accessing them and so speed access times. 

Each data centre is composed of storage resources divided into bulk data stored on massive, RAID 6-protected, arrays of white-box Intel storage boxes using serial ATA (SATA) drives and Ethernet connectivity. Whenever a file is ingested metadata is created and this is stored on separate and redundant Fibre Channel SANs (storage area networks) that provide very fast access and location-independent data storage.

All files are given a hash algorithm which helps search speed, provides version control and can be used to ensure file integrity. Customers access the SDN via an API but CIFS, NFS, webDAV and FTP access methods are coming, probably later this year. Nirvanix has around seven patents outstanding on its software technology.

Buckley said there are three main use cases:-

1. A web 2.0 company storing user-generated content and needing unpredictable scalable, pay-as-you-go storage. E.g. Ogrant.

2. The embedded market where a company will plug a Nirvanix SDN-based but probably differently branded cloud backup service on top of a home/SOHO or SMB storage appliance. La Cie is doing this with HipServ (the rebranded SDN) on its Ethernet Disk Mini - Home Edition (500GB)  The next version of this will have a backup to storage in the cloud HipServ facility based on Nirvanix' SDN.

A UK company, Miana, is doing the same kind of thing with its WizzDrive, also SDN-based.

3. The enterprise market where a company uses the SDN to provide a long term archive and/or disaster recovery facility.

Nirvanix cites a Fortune 10 company customer with 4PB of backup tapes in an archive that is almost unsearchable and thus useless for a compliance or legal discovery request. It is migrating 50TB at a time to the SDN with the now-cloud stored data being searchable and readily recoverable.

The customer now has three offices in three continents capable of searching and reviewing the data at a cost 60 percent less than that of the tapes they were maintaining.

Nirvanix reckons it is pole position to supply Fortune 10-class and other enterprises with cloud backup and archive needs because of its global set of inter-connected data centres.

It states that EMC's Mozy has just one data centre and therefore cannot provide the internal disaster recovery, the location transparency or the movement of files to a data centre nearest an accessing customer office that SDN can provide.

Buckley said that Amazon has two data centres with a third specifically for backup but they are not interconnected, thus preventing customers enjoying the benefits that Nirvanix' interconnected data centres supply.

The senior managers and founders of Nirvanix have entensive experience in enterprise storage suppliers.

At first glance it appears that there are only three enterprise cloud storage suppliers with real actual or potential credibility: Nirvanix and its SDN; EMC and its Mozy/Fortress; and Amazon with its S3 service.

EMC has to implement its Hulk (Intel-based) hardware and Maui (Linux-based) clusterable and highly scalable object file system-based infrastructure before it has the kind of cloud storage infrastructure than can compete with Nirvanix' current SDN.

Amazon's S3 has the lack of inter-connected data centres problem as well as being simply out-performed in file access speed by Nirvanix. It is not clear that S3 will progress beyond its SOHO/SME end-user customers yet.

IBM with its Arsenal Digital and XIV acquisitions probably has ambitions in the cloud storage area too.

For now Nirvanix appears to be the best-positioned of the three and, with a substantial contract from a Fortune 10 enterprise,  it will be in a high state of internal excitement at its prospects.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}