by Anam Alpenia, Red Herring
Unveiled last month, cloud storage provider TwinStrata’s CloudArray 4.0 takes the world of cloud storage up a notch, enabling both Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) protocols so that both data blocks and files can be uploaded for a fully empowered cloud. “Essentially, any application can work seamlessly in the cloud,” explained Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of TwinStrata. “Anything that can be done with on-premise storage can now easily be done in the cloud without a local storage footprint.”
The company has prided itself on making “cloud storage look and feel like local storage,” Vekiarides explained, but until now had only accommodated storage for block data and not the actual programs that powered a business. Its newly released product is the first cloud-integrated storage product to natively support NAS and SAN storage.
By putting all storage needs in the cloud, TwinStrata is able to provide continuous data access, which is where the product truly becomes “revolutionary,” Vekiarides explained. It is a tremendous advantage for backup and archiving. On a data center floor, enterprises continually struggle to upgrade and backup their storage. Twinstrata provides a data storage appliance with a very small footprint up to 2U that stores up to 50 petabytes of data, enough to fill a large room of disk drives. Plus, the capacity can serve as disaster recovery with the cloud functioning as the remote site, saving hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in expenses. Enterprises pay only for what they need, spending essentially nothing on disaster recovery if no disaster occurs.
“Our appliance has virtually unlimited capacity that never needs to be replaced,” Vekiarides said. “It makes life easier for IT administrators, not to mention saving millions of dollars when it comes to disaster recovery.”
The new product also features new management functions that deliver better visibility against historic and present operations. A new dashboard provides easier visual access, monitoring and reporting on data stored in the cloud.
The company’s cloud solution is now supported by more than 20 cloud storage providers, with the addition of Dell, Google, HP Cloud Services, IBM SmartCloud, SoftLayer and others this year.
“CloudArray 4.0 provides a viable alternative to replacing enterprise class or mid range storage,” Vekiarides said. “You can upload any data and push it into the cloud without changing any applications. That’s the key. Whether you buy storage in a file or in a block storage array, you now have an option that can sit alongside it and significantly reduce the maintenance expense of doing it yourself.”