News

posted on 26 June 2008 09:14

Nirvanix is adding NFS and CIFS interfaces to its cloud storage service, meaning customers can have a cloud network-attached storage drive or CloudNAS resource.

The Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network (SDN) is a global cluster of storage nodes using the Nirvanix Internet Media File System (IMFS). It stores, delivers and processes storage requests in the most appropriate network location to speed the user experience.

It is now available with NAS interaces in a beta program. Users attach the SDN to a local network as a Windows (CIFS,  Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows XP) or Linux filer (NFS, RedHat 5 or Suse 10) and can then work with the applications they are accustomed to, or drag and drop files from their desktops to the SDN CloudNAS.

Storage administrators can also point, click and configure their storage accounts to mirror to one or more locations automatically. This eliminates the need for backups, data migrations and  data management complexities, at a cost, Nirvanix asserts, that is a fraction of what it costs with actual on-premises NAS hardware.

Patrick Harr, Nirvanix' CEO, said: “Previously, enterprises could only access cloud storage by programming to an API. Now with CloudNAS, customers can immediately integrate Nirvanix’s cloud storage into their existing applications and processes, and forego new purchases of expensive NetApp, EMC, IBM or other NAS products in favor of Nirvanix’s storage-as-a-service offering.”

Nirvanix cites a recent third-party study of 67 medium to large enterprises indicated that owning and maintaining network attached storage can cost between $15 to $43 per gigabyte per year based on storage class. Based on these costs, the Nirvanix SDN is one-fifth or less the total cost of ownership of typical NAS vendor offerings. The study is currently available here (registration required).

Nirvanix is launching CloudNAS as part of a program targeting companies that maintain repositories of archival, backup or unstructured data that requires long-term storage and use, or companies that use automated processes to transfer files to mapped drives. 

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}