Nirvanix Blog

Our friends at Vembu just came out with a very entertaining parody on the cloud space set to the tune of Vanilla Ice's, Ice-Ice Baby (or Bowies' Under Pressure for you purists) titled Cloud Cloud Maybe. They present a pretty good high level overview of the players in the space and the opinions from analysts that ruffled the most feathers in our industry. Even in the midst of the satiric clip the message is loud and clear - despite the hype "cloud is here to stay so you better learn the rules". You can see it here - Cloud Cloud Maybe .

It has been a good year for Nirvanix so far. I thought I would take some time to recap some of the awards and recognition we have received since the beginning of ’09.

May – Red Herring 100 North America Award: Every year Red Herring reviews private technology companies across the US on their innovativeness, quality of management and execution. Out of this years pool of 1,200 companies Nirvanix was selected as one of the final 100! Previous winners include Google, Yahoo, Skype, and Salesforce so we are in good company. Thanks Red Herring!

April - InformationWeek StartUp 50: Nirvanix was the only cloud storage provider named in InformationWeek’s Startup 50! The StartUp 50 is a list of “up-and-coming” technology vendors that have delivered innovative technology or business value. You can read John Foley’s review of Nirvanix for the award here. 

February – Search Storage Product of the Year – Bronze Award:  CloudNAS® was honored with a Bronze Award for Search Storage’s Product of the Year beating out applications from EMC and Symantec!  We worked hard to develop CloudNAS to provide enterprises a way to easily leverage cloud storage without developing to an API or changing their existing processes. It was great to get recognized for our efforts and more importantly the value CloudNAS delivers to users. 

James Urquhart of CNET recently asked about the service levels offered by cloud computing providers. He suggested that many don’t meet the basic needs of enterprise customers in a number of areas, being mainly “self-service”. Even the supposed premium support offered by many isn’t up to the standards of enterprise users.

James presented a number of items that an “average joe” customer should be capable of, and we’d like to show how our service meets these needs:

• Collect data when a problem occurs - Nirvanix has a complete set of error response codes which are proactively presented to the customer if problems occur. We also have extensive internal logging mechanisms to track details of the system’s behavior so we can investigate the root cause of any issues.
• Report the problem with a click of a button - Nirvanix already offers a simple web form customers can use within our management portal to report any concerns. We are actively working to further improve and automate this facility.
• Have a "self-service" case created with fields where customers can track the progress they are making against issue resolution--and which can be "mined" by the vendor's support organization to discover trending bugs, etc. - Our issue reporting form (noted above) automatically creates a trackable ticket in our system. This kind of support tracking system is exactly what enterprise users have in-house and are used to working with. We are continually improving customer visibility of support status as well.
• Search documentation for workarounds or solutions without having to jump through hoops - The Nirvanix Developer Center has been very popular with users and developers alike. We have online documentation, code samples, and discussion forums where customers can ask and answer questions and share their experiences.
• Have the option to jump to a chat session or forum where he or she might get some help - The Nirvanix Developer Center forums are monitored by our support staff, and they respond to posts there in addition to our standard incident support communication channels.
• Have the option to select a one-time premium support option if a case warrants it - The Nirvanix Developer Center offers a high level of support across the board, and enterprise contracts include close personal support including live phone calls.

Nirvanix feels that the level of support called for in this CNET article is exactly what customers should demand, and we’re happy to be able to offer it to our customers today!

A few weeks ago Iron Mountain launched what they are touting as the “Industry’s First Enterprise Solution for Cloud-Based File Archiving”. While they are not the first (we were back in June in partnership with Atempo), we still welcome them into the space. We know that IT budgets around the industry are being slashed but data at every organization still continues to grow. By leveraging services like Enterprise cloud storage companies:

• Eliminate the need to purchase additional tier 3 storage hardware
• Eliminate the need to capacity plan putting an end to over purchasing hardware for archival storage
• Extend the life of their current tier 1 and 2 storage assets by shifting data to the cloud
• Ease the burden of managing data that is rarely used, freeing up IT resources to focus on core operations

In addition to the economic benefits, cloud storage is also instantly available making it the perfect solution to replace tape. This increased functionality now means that businesses can continue to use and extract value from their data instead of casting it away and locking it into some dingy vault. So once again we welcome Iron Mountain to the cloud. Options are always good for users and there is plenty of room for different services regardless of if they were the first to enter the space or not.

We sat down with Mike Wall, a Nirvanix Board Member and storage industry veteran, this week to get his take on the evolution of storage and his opinions on cloud storage.  Wall’s take on the industry and Nirvanix’s place therein shed some light on where the cloud storage market has come from, its state today, and which direction it will turn in the future.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I started my career with IBM in New York in the sales and marketing departments for about nine years.  I moved to a supercomputer company called Cray Research in 1987, where I was in charge of marketing and sales operations.  After that I spent 15 years with Intel, where my last role was the Storage Group general manager.  Today, I am the CEO of a Dicom Grid, a Phoenix based healthcare I.T. start-up that has developed unique IP that enables the storage and transmission of medical imaging studies over the public internet while still maintaining HIPPA compliance. 

What motivated you to join Nirvanix’s Board of Directors?
During my time at Intel, I was the sponsoring executive for several storage related investments.  In the process of going forward with any investment, we would always do a large amount of due diligence on the market opportunity, the competitiveness of the technology, and validate whether or not the product was ready for the marketplace.  When I came across Nirvanix’s Storage Delivery Network last summer while at Intel, it was obvious that it was the right product at the right time.  I saw a great opportunity to help guide a team and further develop a product that I believed had enormous market potential.  Soon after leaving Intel, I joined the board of directors for Nirvanix and have been so for about nine months.

When you joined the Board of Directors, what were your goals for Nirvanix?
My goal was to help bring in people who understood the architecture, the technology, and who could really get ‘under the hood’ and ensure that we deliver on the promise of the Storage Delivery Network.  Soon after, we brought on Patrick Ritto as our VP of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer. Patrick is someone who I believed could understand the technology and lead the development team. Not only did Ritto validate all of these criteria but, even more importantly, he confirmed that this product was ready to satisfy the large enterprise customer.  He has built out the team with other experienced individuals and, after a thorough analysis of the core technology, put together a solid product development plan.  Our architecture will scale and still deliver the performance required to meet the needs of the large enterprise. With the team now in place, the focus has shifted to honing the Storage Delivery Network by focusing on reliability, scalability, and performance of the system. 
I also work closely with the sales and marketing teams on their ‘go to market’ plans and direct customer engagements.

How have you seen storage evolve?
Having been involved with storage solutions at Intel for the last decade, I was able to help lead changes in the market place from proprietary storage systems to standards and commodity based hardware platforms.  Intel and other companies in the marketplace worked with the OEM’s to improve cost efficiency and develop software solutions based on standard hardware, such as the Intel microprocessors.  What evolved was a distinct transition from expensive proprietary systems to much less expensive systems based on standard technology. 
The next phase of the evolution of the marketplace is to drive even more cost out of the system by enabling customers to buy a service; ideally, a service in which users don’t have to encumber themselves with large capital expenditures for hardware, investment in plant, equipment, and personnel. From my position, I was able to see the advent of cloud computing and storage as a natural evolution.  As the technology advanced, providing computer and storage services at a lower cost point was the natural progression. 

Where will the cloud storage providers of today succeed where other Storage as a Service (saas) providers have previously failed?
A lot of the earlier versions of storage as a service may have been based off great ideas or technologies, but it was before the marketplace was ready for it.  The marketplace is definitely ready now.  Enterprise customers can no longer afford to spend large portions of their money on plant equipment and personnel or provide services that are not primary to the core functions of the business. 
There are plenty of ideal niches for cloud storage to begin to permeate the market.  The low hanging fruit of cloud storage, or what I refer to as tertiary storage, are ripe for the picking.  One example of tertiary storage would be disaster recovery data.  Anything which needs to be accessible, but is not part of a transaction or day to day in business, is an ideal use case for cloud storage.
Most companies, such as large enterprise corporation like a General Electric, have their own storage infrastructure.   It’s only natural for humans, and hence, large corporations, to want to control all their own data.  But, if the only thing that they gain from spending millions of dollars in capital expenditures, building and incurring costs for personnel, power, cooling, security, and everything else, is an often times unfounded sense of control, then at a certain point these companies need to reevaluate their strategy.  They must weigh how much they are spending and ask themselves if this is really vital for their day to day operations.  Often times the answer is no, and the next logical step is to start the transition to the cloud.
There’s a lot of low hanging fruit.   Companies have vast amounts of data that they must be able to access, want stored safely and reliably, but is not ‘transaction oriented’ data and they want it stored for a lot less money.  A specific example is my new company DiCOM Grid.  We store medical imaging studies in the cloud for our customers.  In 2008, there will be over 800 million medical imaging studies created that require over 100PB for disaster recovery alone!!   That’s an example of the sweet spot for companies like Nirvanix.   Over time, as networks get faster, and the technology becomes more common place, cloud storage services will move up the food chain and, in some cases, may provide primary storage. 

What do you think makes Nirvanix stand out against other cloud storage providers?
There are a lot of companies out there that are touting themselves as cloud storage providers.  Anyone can throw a storage array on the internet and say they have storage as a service.  There are the enterprise class cloud storage providers, like Nirvanix, and there are the offsite PC backup or hobbyist clouds, like Amazon S3.  While these services are all grouped in the same category, there is really no comparison.  There is such a vast difference in the capabilities of those different solutions.
What will separate the men from the boys, is who can deliver a very user-friendly storage network with high performance, high reliability, and a system that can scale up to petabytes globally.  That is the competitive differentiation that Nirvanix offers the marketplace relative to our “competitors”.

What is the main reason that the marketplace will make the switch to cloud storage?
Economics, economics, economics.  It’s really a cost reduction play.  Once the corporate criteria for accessibility, performance, scalability, reliability, and security of the technology have all been reached, then it comes down to one thing, the potential to significantly reduce corporate costs.  An enterprise needs to be able to take advantage of the cost benefits of the cloud while maintaining their productivity and competitiveness as a company.  There are a lot of companies that can offer cheap storage in the cloud, but they can’t satisfy those enterprise criteria.  Nirvanix has met the enterprise performance criteria at a significant cost savings.  

What do you think is driving the doubts of cloud storage skeptics?
Anyone who is criticizing cloud storage is probably part of the group who will be hurt financially by the lack of hardware sales.  From what I have seen, most of the skeptics are the hardware and solutions vendors, who are seeing what a great threat cloud storage is to their business.   Naturally they will try to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  It is not to their advantage for cloud storage to be embraced by the marketplace.  They are attempting to delay the inevitable. 

*Rachel Brown*

The term “Cloud Storage” has become en vogue in the past 18 months, pushing the hype curve into the red.  While industry buzz and news around this technology has increased, definitions have failed to root any sensibility and meaning as to what it really is and what can differentiate services that proclaim to provide it. The purpose of this blog post is to show where the Nirvanix SDN fits into the Cloud Storage space and how our proprietary technology makes us the best choice for the enterprise looking for an alternative to building and owning a local or global storage infrastructure to support such data-intensive operations as online archive, remote backup or media library management.

A Cloud Is White, But So Is A Whiteboard

The terms “Cloud Storage” or “Cloud Computing” come from us whiteboard aficionados of the 1990s who loved scribbling a crude fluffy cloud to represent the wide area network, which in most cases now means the public Internet.  To that “cloud” we would draw a line to a box representing a server connecting to the WAN or the Internet.

Today, most often, storage and computing industry professionals refer to offering these storage and compute resources over links through the Internet using web-services protocols, thus the common terms, Cloud Storage and Cloud Computing.

Cloud Storage Is Not Online Storage.

At Nirvanix, we draw the clear distinction between Cloud Storage and online storage.  Cloud Storage is a platform behind an Application Programming Interface (API) upon which one may build a limitless number of applications that harness the platform as its storage repository.  Both Nirvanix’s Storage Delivery Network and Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) are examples of Cloud Storage.

Online storage is a fully integrated application, typically singly purposed, designed and deployed to fulfill a particular storage purpose as a service.  The storage component is integrated into the front end of the application in such a way that they are only together within the product.  An example of online storage is EMC’s Mozy Backup Service.
Since Nirvanix is a Business-to-Business Cloud Storage provider, we enable businesses to offer their services in the market.  As such, Nirvanix’s Storage Delivery Network is used commonly to create online storage products.   Prime examples of this are www.wizzdrive.com or www.freedrive.com

A Cloud Is Not A Cloud: Why Some Clouds Bring Rain

Looking past all the words, Cloud Storage must be a group of physical storage servers and other supporting hardware, with virtualization software, enabling the multi-tenant partitioning of resources to store data at some point. Differentiation begins to show itself quickly here though.  Most services we have reviewed to date, be they online storage or Cloud Storage offerings, tend to have some common shortcomings.  At the highest level, data may be backed up but only reside online at one facility on the planet; or perhaps at a second one that purely serves for disaster recovery purposes.  Other services have developers coding to two or more APIs for their different locations.
These issues pose a few problems.  First, and most obvious, is that there is a single point of failure on the network.  What if a backhoe digs up the fiber connects to the hosted data center and the “cloud” turns into condensation?  Downtime would occur for much longer than a typical corporation would care to tolerate.  There have been many dramatic examples of this in the 2008 in the cloud industry due to several causes, the backhoe excepted thus far.

The second, slightly less obvious problem, is that if you are a global business using this service, your offices proximate to these one or two data center operations will have excellent data services while more dispersed offices will not due to the physics of space and time.

Nirvanix designed a way around this by building a multi-layered, virtual file system, dubbed the Internet Media File System™ (IMFS), which unifies the many Nirvanix storage nodes located across North America, Europe and Asia into one, load-balancing storage network.  Users set their availability policies in such a way that if downtime is not an option, backhoe of not, their data will be live in two or more synchronized locations around the world.  Furthermore, their Tokyo and New York offices will have the same, consistent, speedy services.  
To achieve these attributes, Nirvanix had to build certain components into its own brand of Cloud Storage through IMFS to eliminate these challenges presented by competing architectures.

The first component is Global Virtualization. This is perhaps the most important characteristic of a Cloud Storage service.  When storing data, the namespace is what directs access to or from a file. When a storage system is installed or moved into traditional storage architectures the namespace needs to be modified to support the change. This can be a monumental task for large storage upgrades or migrations.  “Storage as a service” offerings provide a virtual namespace that usually only map to one geographic location. This means you still need to develop logic to route your data to different geographical locations (if this is even an option) based upon a certain set of criteria. This also means that there is one point of failure, so in the event of downtime at the data center, the availability of the content stored in that center is compromised. Nirvanix has solved this issue by utilizing the patent-pending IMFS, which routes data to one of the many globally dispersed storage nodes based upon a user’s geographic location. Additionally, the IMFS supports policy-based data replication that enables the replication of data in up to three geographic locations.

This leads to our next characteristic, Continuous Availability.  As mentioned previously Nirvanix offers the only Cloud Storage service with automated movement of content throughout the network.  This means the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network enables the most efficient storage and delivery of data regardless of a user’s location. This, combined with Nirvanix’s policy-based file replication, means that you can choose the availability characteristics that suit your business’ needs. This approach allows us to provide industry-leading service level agreements from 99.9 – 100 percent.

The third Cloud Storage characteristic is Unlimited Scalability, driven by both hardware and software. This basically means that the service provider can handle any amount of data you need to store. The IMFS also plays a significant role here allowing tremendous scale, of up to 1,000s of exabytes under a single namespace. We make scalability even easier by offering integrated application and child account management, meaning you can have multiple applications under a single account and each application can have millions of accounts under it. We not only offer unlimited scalability, we do so in a way that allows for easy integration. Nirvanix also offers the most choices to interface with the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network via a standards-based API, an FTP Proxy and the Nirvanix CloudNAS (software that maps Nirvanix as a drive for Windows or Linux).

The final characteristic of a true Cloud Storage service is that it must be a Usage-Based Service, meaning you only pay for the services used. This is a very beneficial characteristic because companies save on purchasing hardware and software (CAPEX) while also saving on hiring additional system administrators (OPEX). Additionally, you benefit from the advantages of Nirvanix’s global network. Even if you were to continue to expand your own storage or purchase virtualization software, expanding to multiple geographically dispersed nodes would be cost prohibitive. Conversely not expanding globally limits your scalability and availability.  

As you can see, being a true Cloud Storage service means more then simply offering storage through an Internet connection. It should allow you to write to one location regardless of where in the world you want your data stored. It should offer methods to guarantee the continuous access of data, eliminating bottlenecks. It should have the capacity and provide interface methods that allow you to expand in the manner that you choose.   It should also provide this without requiring the purchase of hardware and do so in a convenient usage-based service model. So, while the term “Cloud Storage” may be used a little too often these days, in the press, blogs and beyond, the storage model being mentioned is not part of the true Cloud Storage model in Nirvanix’s definition, unless said service utilizes these four components.  There may be a lot of “clouds” out there but not all clouds are created equally, some may actually bring rain.

MediaMax, Inc, also known as “The Linkup” (TLU) recently announced the closing of their business effective August 8^th, 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 8^th 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 8^th.  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: 

1. Problems arose in the Streamload V.4 to MediaMax V.5 upgrade in 2006; and
2.  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.

There is currently about $55B spent on storage and storage services annually.  Much of this is spent on what I call the storage box – hardware and storage software that stores data of all types.  Due to often inaccurate capacity planning and non-centralized storage across multiple divisions, departments, and workgroups , the current rates of utilization for these storage boxes are at a shockingly low 10-12%.  Couple this with the exponential growth in data, particularly unstructured, which has put severe pressure on already strained IT budgets and staffs.  Companies simply can’t keep up with the explosive data growth, let alone the costs of storage without altering their practices and finding a new more efficient model.  The archaic box model of storage is now extinct.

As a result, we are seeing the emergence of a new IT inflection point in storage – the shift from the box to the Cloud.  No longer will companies buy boxes and rack, stack, power and manage them.  Companies will simply plug into to the Cloud and receive benefits beyond the box.  These benefits will include breakthrough economics, on demand global scale, and guaranteed security and availability.  As such, a minimum of 50% of the current $55 Billion annual expenditures in storage and storage services will shift to the Cloud within the next 5 to 7 years.  Companies will shift from managing their explosive storage costs and growth, to managing their businesses.

There are three necessities occurring within the industry which will drive the move to the Cloud:

#1  Economics, Economics, Economics
If you look at the total cost of ownership (TCO) associated with storage, particularly the cost of buying the hardware, then managing it, growing it, and planning capacity expansion, you can quickly see how inefficient the old model is.   I have seen companies that are buying, racking, stacking, powering and managing their own storage and can end up paying as much as $3 per GB/month. This price model should now be obsolete. Companies will end up saving a minimum of 50% off their total costs for storage once they make the move to the Cloud.  Instead of investing in those non-core competencies that don’t add value to their business, companies should be investing in building out their business and fostering partnerships and customer relationships.

#2  On Demand Global Scale
There has been a large mass-scale growth in unstructured data and content storage.  This huge growth in unstructured data presents an exponentially increasing problem.  As the amount of unstructured data continues to grow there is a severe pressure on IT environments to quickly deploy and manage globally accessible scalable storage.  Applications and users can no longer be locked to a single location, and in many cases must scale to meet what the Internet demands.  Instead of focusing on managing storage, which doesn’t give you a competitive edge, you can focus on managing and growing your business.

#3 Guaranteed Security and Availability
Part of the resistance to Cloud storage has been around trust and reliability.  Moving data into the Cloud is more secure and allows more persistent data availability than current paradigms.  For example, if you look at tape archiving, where you are shipping off a tape on a truck to an external environment, in many cases Iron Mountain, what if something happens to that truck?  An obvious question, but a valid concern presented when there are people processes associated with that data. Not only is it simple to put data in the Cloud, but that data is also encrypted before it ever leaves the four walls, in flight, and at rest.  Additionally, with a fully redundant network, in which data is replicated to multiple nodes, data availability and security can be guaranteed at 100%.

THE RESPONSE
Historically speaking, there is always a new kind of company that emerges on the other side of that IT inflection point.  When the industry realizes the points of concern, and the potential benefits to remedying those concerns, there will be a major shift within the market.  Some preexisting companies will undoubtedly modify their current services or pull a marketing veil over out-dated technologies.  However, there will also be new, legitimate companies and services that will emerge, which will not deal with the legacy approaches or the cannibalization of existing out-dated products.  These revolutionaries will build new DNA from the ground up, optimized for that new model.   In the case of Cloud Storage, I am confident that Nirvanix will be that company.    Built from the ground up for better economics, unlimited scalability, and 100% guaranteed security and reliability.

Through innovation and unparalleled dedication to customer support Nirvanix’s unique solution, the Storage Delivery Network™ (SDN), will lead the forefront of the Cloud Storage movement. Since launch in October 2007, we have signed major Fortune 50, large media, entertainment, and well known PC software companies that depend on us every day to store, manage, and deliver their data worldwide. We have maintained 100% uptime availability since launch while growing 10 fold in 6 months.  We are uniquely positioned with our SDN and our differentiation will continue to grow as we accelerate innovation in key areas including expansion of our multipetabyte global storage network, pioneering secure and easy access methods through standard storage protocols, and delivering advanced data security and reliability policies unrivaled in the industry.  The box is dead, long live the Cloud!

Best Regards,

Patrick Harr | Founder & CEO

San Diego, CA –Tuesday, February 12^th, 2008 - The cumbersome and costly Storage Server, otherwise known as The Box, is dead.  Investigators presume foul play, and believe that this case  can be linked to a recent string of related incidents.  There have been reports of numerous slayings  across the globe, with all victims being members of the Storage 1.0 clan.  Recent fatalities include EMC, NetApp, and Isilon, among others.  The police investigation into  these deaths has led authorities to a unified conclusion, and they have made public the name of their top suspect: Nirvanix.  

Investigators  claim that Nirvanix  is guilty of coercing customers into committing these violent acts. An  internal source recently captured this footage of one of the most notorious Nirvanix customers, Michael Witz, founder and CEO of Free Drive, brutally demolishing The Box.  That same source also provided video evidence containing Nirvanix CEO, Patrick Harr, and his accomplice, Michael Witz, destroying The Box in front of an audience at a recent speaking engagement, DEMO 08.

According to industry insiders, there has been surprisingly little tumult in reaction to these passings. Instead, a subdued celebration has been taking place, a muted rejoice in reaction to the near-extinction of the Storage 1.0 clan. One source, who chose not to be identified, stated, “We feel liberated now that the Storage 1.0 clan has experienced their downfall.  All of us in the storage circle, both beginning developers, like myself, and some of the more established online business owners, are embracing the Storage 2.0 revolution.  Once we kill The Box, we can save the time and money we were spending to build and manage data centers and just plug our applications into the Nirvanix SDN.”

While most are rallying behind Nirvanix, as their Storage Cloud model overthrows The Box, there  still remains some hesitance in the air.  Some can not accept the inevitable demise of The Box, and are exhibiting signs of denial.  Nirvanix advocates are guiding these individuals through the coping process and helping them Experience Nirvanix. 

One advocate explained that once application developers and business owners free themselves of their infatuation with The Box they will then begin to Experience Nirvanix.  He described the state of Nirvanix as “an enlightened state of being which produces peace of mind, a mind that has come to a point of perfect lucidity and clarity due to the absence of archaic storage models.  An individual who enters the state of Nirvanix will reach their highest level of storage optimization, the natural result that accrues to one who integrates their application virtually and conducts their business with an intelligent Storage Delivery Network (SDN). Such a service dissolves the unpredictable storage needs of user-generated content (UGC) applications that otherwise keep beings forever wandering through the impermanent and suffering-generating realms of unscalable storage, unreliable delivery of content, and time consuming management.”

Nirvanix has gone so far as to make a public statement and invited all members of the storage circle to witness scheduled destructions of The Box.  All future fatalities are listed on their News & Events page.

 *Rachel Brown*

 

 
Last week the Nirvanix team headed out to Palm Desert to attended DEMO 08, a conference that focuses on emerging technologies and new products.  DEMO hand-selected the 77 companies that spoke at this year’s conference, and among those speakers was our CEO, Patrick Harr.  DEMO organizer Chris Shipley invited Patrick to speak because she believed Nirvanix had a ground-breaking announcement, worthy of being heard by the sold-out DEMO audience. 

If you haven’t already heard, Nirvanix’s DEMO announcement included the recent expansion our Storage Delivery Network to include European and Asian storage nodes, which enables the intelligent storage and movement of files and guarantees the best end user experience on a global scale. Also introduced were our new Media Services including transcoding, video frame extraction, and image manipulation. 

With these launches, Nirvanix continues to raise the bar for premium storage services, especially in the user-generated content sector. 

This latest launch once again proves  our dedication to making integration and management  of scalable storage for user-generated content driven applications headache-free.  In that vain, we announced audio and video transcoding, photo/video thumbnail extraction, photo resizing, and the ever-so-handy integration of tag and meta data search.  Not only do these new facets of the Nirvanix SDN allow for simple control, but most importantly, they will help developers and business owners save valuable time and money.  Just plug into the SDN and go!

Nirvanix is leading the pack in the outsource storage movement, and eliminating the need for complicated software and cumbersome storage devices, otherwise known as “boxes”.   The expression 'The box is dead' will be the moniker of 2008, as more services move to the cloud.  So, not only did we announce network additions and new functionality at DEMO, but we also announced the death of the box.  We thought there would be no better person to help us kill the box than one of our valued and, apparently, most aggressive customers: Michael Witz of FreeDrive.   So we armed Michael with a sledgehammer and he destroyed a server on stage at DEMO.  The Nirvanix team also created a video clip of Michael  pummeling  another box, which Byte and Switch called “reminiscent of 1960s pop-art campus flicks”.

Check it out:

6-minute presentation by Patrick and Michael at DEMO 08—click here.
6-minute interview with Patrick Harr: The SDN explained— click here.

1- minute video of Michael smashing the a server.  The Box is Dead--- click here.

To see all future events that Nirvanix will be attending, and register to attend, please visit our News & Events page.

 *Rachel Brown*

Nirvanix Marketing Associate