CTERA Fusion Direct unifies file and object access in single global namespace

CTERA Fusion Direct provides a high-performance data fabric supporting file and object access to the same data accessed in a federated namespace.

CTERA announced its Fusion gateway software in October 2023. At that time, CTERA said that it provided a global file system hosted on a public cloud or on-premises object store, and accessed from a datacenter or remote site using an edge caching device to speed data access. Files were synced and shared between users for collaboration. The Fusion software provided simultaneous SMB, NFS, and S3 access to a data set. Cloud applications could then connect directly to enterprise file stores, with no need for an intervening data copy to separate S3 buckets.

CTERA says Fusion Direct advances this by unifying these two file and object domains into a single, high-performance data fabric. It has its own architecture that "enables files and objects to coexist natively within a single, federated global namespace. Data can be written as files and read as objects, or written as objects and read as files, with full bidirectional read and write capabilities" on a global scale.

Oded Nagel, CTERA CEO, said: "The historic divide between data for human collaboration and data for machine analytics created friction and complexity that slowed companies down. We've collapsed those silos. This fundamental shift in architecture unlocks the full potential of a customer's data, providing the unified data platform necessary to not just compete, but to lead in an economy increasingly driven by machine learning."

The company says there is no file-to-object conversion bottleneck, no proprietary chunking scheme, no internal block dependency, and no translation gateway mediating object access. Applications and users can access the data they want via SMB, NFS, or S3 as before.

Fusion Direct features include:

• Native Zero-Copy Access: Data written through the CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is immediately available as standard S3 objects. Conversely, existing S3 buckets can be attached as-is, making their contents instantly accessible as files. No duplication, no latency, and no storage overhead.
• High-Speed File Streaming: High-resolution media and massive datasets can be streamed directly from object storage to file-based applications, eliminating the need for time-consuming local downloads.
• S3 over RDMA and GPUDirect Access: Fusion Direct exposes native objects and supports high-performance standards such as S3 over RDMA, allowing AI clusters and GPUs to read and write data at maximum bandwidth.
• Future-Proof Data Sovereignty: Data remains in standard S3 buckets, free from proprietary encapsulation or translation layer. This ensures organizations maintain full control over their information assets across any cloud or on-premises platform.

Amit Rawlani, senior director of technology alliances and solutions at CTERA partner Cloudian, said: "Our customers are looking for the limitless scalability of object storage and the broad compatibility of traditional file access. CTERA Fusion Direct is the first technology we've seen that delivers this without the performance trade-offs of a traditional gateway approach."

CTERA Fusion Direct has been patented and is available now as a component of the CTERA Intelligent Data Platform product. More info available here.

Comment

CTERA has evolved from collaboration-based cloud file services into a more general data management supplier, moving into the unified and high-speed file and object data access market where we find Arcitecta and Hammerspace. Nasuni and Panzura are also present, as is Komprise. LucidLink and Suite Studios provide high-speed distant access using part-file streaming. Hammerspace uses parallel NFS as well as GPUDirect to achieve its speed.

All these suppliers are aware that AI inference, and AI agents as well, will need access to both file and object data and want their software to facilitate that.