MediaMax,
Inc, also known as “The Linkup” (TLU) recently announced the closing of their
business effective August 8th, 2008.
We sincerely sympathize with the frustration and anger that this
announced closing has caused their users, and as such, have extended our
service to MediaMax, Inc. through August 8th free of charge.
We would like
to take time to answer questions that have resulted from this closure, as well
as dispel some inaccurate and blatantly false information that is being
reported on certain blogs.
How can I access my MediaMax/The Linkup
data?
The files
that were transferred into TLU can be downloaded through August 8, 2008. Those files that were not transferred remain
secure in the old Streamload/MediaMax storage system; however, access to those
files requires the MediaMax application front-end and database - both owned by
MediaMax, Inc. MediaMax contracted SAVVIS and Nirvanix to
host their MediaMax application/database and old Streamload/MediaMax servers
and storage systems, respectively, in July 2007. MediaMax’s intent was to migrate users and
files from the MediaMax application and old Streamload/MediaMax storage system
into the new TLU application and the new Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network™. However, as documented on the TLU blog on
their impending closure, this migration was only partly possible and only a
portion of the files were transferred.
Can Nirvanix help me retrieve MediaMax
files that are not available on The Linkup?
No. All files that were migrated or uploaded
directly to TLU can be downloaded through August 8th. Any files that were not migrated to TLU
require the MediaMax application and database front-end which Nirvanix has no
access to. Ownership of the MediaMax
application front-end and user data belongs solely to MediaMax, Inc. MediaMax has always had full and complete
management control over its application, database, billing and software used to
provide service to their users. As a
result, Nirvanix cannot legally or technically provide access to MediaMax data
on the old Streamload/MediaMax system, despite inaccurate claims to the
contrary.
Are Nirvanix Inc. and MediaMax Inc.
the same company?
No. Nirvanix and MediaMax split out of the same company, Streamload, Inc. in July 2007. Streamload, Inc. was a business-to-consumer
company started in 2001 initially offering unlimited online storage for free as
well as paid upgrade plans. Due to the
success of the free and paid offering, the company had grown to manage
approximately a petabyte of media files and billions of objects for tens of
thousands of users. During this growth
over several years, the company accumulated valuable intellectual property
surrounding scalable online storage.
However,
while Streamload had accumulated numerous industry awards for pioneering the
online storage service, the company quickly outpaced itself which led to a
difficult and well publicized transition from the Streamload application (V.4)
to the MediaMax application (V.5) in 2006.
The company also struggled to adapt to changing market conditions with
many new free entrants coming on-line as well as a large buildup of free and
former users and their associated storage costs. The company never deleted any inactive data
stored for its former users and received no monies for maintaining those
files. As a result, this required the
company to raise new capital and change its direction as it was losing money.
Streamload
investors and Board subsequently recruited a new CEO, Patrick Harr, in early
2007 to raise capital. After a detailed
60-day assessment of the business, it was determined and approved by the Board
in April 2007 to split the company into two to provide best opportunity for
success - one that would focus on consumer-to-business (MediaMax, Inc.) and one
that would focus on business-to-business (Nirvanix, Inc.). Each company would be independently formed
with separate ownership, oversight and investors. The companies were subsequently split off in
July 2007 and have been separate and distinct entities since that time.
The founding of Nirvanix, Inc.
Nirvanix Inc.
incorporated in Delaware, was conceived of by founders Patrick Harr and Geoff
Tudor to pursue the storage-as-a-service market for the enterprise. A new Nirvanix system, called the Storage
Delivery Network, would be built from the ground up with completely new
software and hardware systems. The
Nirvanix SDN would incorporate both the lessons-learned of operating a
large-scale online storage service under Streamload as well as the latest
techniques in clustering, virtualization, database driven file system
architectures and distributed networking.
Nirvanix filed nine patents on this new platform in August 2007 and
launched its award-winning, Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network in October
2007. Nirvanix raised $18M in Series A
financing from Intel Capital, Valhalla Partners, Mission Partners, European
Founders Fund (investors in FaceBook, LinkedIn and others) and Windward
Ventures. Nine Streamload employees of
Nirvanix’s currently 45 employees would join Patrick and Geoff as part of the
founding team. Nirvanix would also go on
to recruit several key technology, operational, marketing and financial
leaders, including Patrick Ritto, CTO and VP of engineering from MIT, Oracle
and VitalStream; Michael Landesman, VP of Data Center Operations from
Rackspace, SAVVIS and Exodus; Major Horton, CFO and former CFO of Rackspace and
head of Dell Financial; Jonathan Buckley, CMO from PowerFile and McDATA; Dan
Havens, VP of Sales from ClearApp, BEA and MicroStrategies and several new key
engineers and operational personnel from EMC, Microsoft, Yahoo, Brocade and
Akamai.
Did Nirvanix delete user data?
No, Nirvanix
has not deleted any customer data.
Nirvanix currently manages a multi-petabyte network for its over 400
business customers on the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network. We have multiple safeguards and checkpoints
against data corruption and potential loss, including continual MD5 hash
checking, dual writes of files in a single node cluster (aka, localized
redundancy of files), replication of files across geographically dispersed
storage nodes and backup of all systems.
The Nirvanix SDN is built on a new and completely redundant, world-class
infrastructure from Cisco, Intel and Seagate.
Our storage nodes are located throughout the world and are co-located in
Tier 1, SAS-70 certified facilities. We
also utilize exclusively tier-1, multi-homed bandwidth for our network backbone
across the SDN. We are also the only
ones in the industry to provide a 100% SLA that results from the ability to
geographically disperse data across clustered storage nodes in the U.S., Europe
and Asia.
Did a storage problem occur at
Streamload?
As documented
on the MediaMax blog in July 2007, a storage problem did occur at Streamload on
the Streamload/MediaMax storage system in June 2007. This occurred prior to the formation of
Nirvanix Inc. and was completely independent of the Nirvanix Storage Delivery
Network which was not launched until October 2007.
Streamload
offered unlimited and then 25 GB of free storage for quite some time. This
resulted in a tremendous amount of data stored in a few million free,
non-active accounts for years.
Streamload was literally paying for former users to store 100’s of
terabytes of old, inactive data for free.
In preparation for the split of the two companies, and subsequent move
of the MediaMax application to SAVVIS, it was determined that the inactive data
from former users would be purged on the Streamload/MediaMax storage system,
thus shrinking the overall storage needs and costs for the new MediaMax
company. During this process, a system
administrator ran a script that misidentified active account data and
disassociated physical files from their owners.
This led to files being marked offline in the old Streamload/MediaMax
file system when they shouldn’t have been.
Data was not permanently deleted but rather marked offline. Subsequent restore efforts led to most files
being re-associated with users and restored back online with the remaining
being identified as corrupted links from long ago or files stored offline on
older JBODs. These JBODs are owned and
physically kept by MediaMax Inc. at its facilities. Concurrently with this process to cull legacy
users and data, the MediaMax service went offline for 7 days as it migrated its
application infrastructure and databases to SAVVIS. The MediaMax blog in July 2007 excerpt is
referenced below:
“…On
June 15, Streamload had a major storage problem that has caused many of our
customer files to become inaccessible. They are not gone forever, but it is
taking a very long time to recover all the data because of the extraordinary
amount of data stored…”
I have read that Nirvanix is to blame
for the difficulties at MediaMax/The Linkup.
This is
simply not true and this false speculation has been spread by a handful of
angry blog posts and perpetuated by a popular technology blog that did not
verify its story by contacting Nirvanix.
For further
clarity, the Streamload/MediaMax service was never hosted on the Nirvanix
Storage Delivery Network. Nirvanix and
its Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network code, network did not exist at the time
when:
- Problems arose in the Streamload V.4
to MediaMax V.5 upgrade in 2006; and
- When the Streamload/MediaMax storage
problems occurred in June 2007.
In addition, Nirvanix was not
responsible for migration of files from MediaMax to TLU as that was the
responsibility and duty of the application.
TLU has
documented on its blog why it is closing its doors and we refer readers to
their site for explanation.
Can data accidently be deleted on the
Nirvanix SDN?
No. This type of problem encountered at
Streamload is not possible in the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network as the
entire system is fully redundant. This
means that all files, and pointers to those files are replicated within the
system. Furthermore, a series of
“checks-and-balances” has been installed natively within the SDN
framework. If a customer deletes a
reference to a file, the system logs the removal of the reference, and leaves
the physical file associated in tact.
After three days, the pointer to the physical file is logged (with a
time stamp) and the pointer to that file is removed, finally after eight days
of the original removal of the customer’s reference, the file is deleted off of
Nirvanix storage. At any point during
this eight-day process, the file can be fully recovered.
To prevent
accidental deletion of files by administrators, all internal deletions follow
this same process and include an additional step - any file deleted by a
systems administrator is archived to permanent backup before the file is
deleted, guaranteeing its full recoverability.
Finally, the SDN contains multiple servers at each node cluster running
integrity checks against all files stored within the SDN. This system operates independently of the SDN
and continuously crawls through all files that have been placed within the SDN,
ensuring that they exist, are accessible, and are not corrupt. Any file which shows even the smallest
problem is marked offline and recovered immediately from one of our redundant
copies.
Has Nirvanix undergone third party
audits and technical due diligence?
Nirvanix has
undergone intense technical and legal due diligence by its investors and is
proud to have raised $18M in Series A financing from its tier one
investors. Along with the due diligence
process associated with acquiring financing, Nirvanix has also undergone
technical/data security due diligence by its many large corporate customers as
well as independent security audits.
Nirvanix currently manages a multi-petabyte storage delivery network and
is extremely pleased to have over 400 enterprise and channel customers/partners
as valued users of the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network.
In addition, Nirvanix has undergone
SAS 70 Type 1
certification and uses state of the art protection techniques including
co-locating in Tier 1 facilities all over the world. Nirvanix has been
providing the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network since October 2007 with an
impeccable record of consistently exceeding its SLA.