Posts Tagged ‘Atmos’

Why You Never Need to Worry about Cloud Storage Lock-in

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

You’ve probably heard the news from a variety of sources: EMC has shut down their EMC Atmos Online service. In case you missed it, you can read EMC’s official statement or read reaction to it here, here, here, here, here or here. To be clear, Atmos online has not vanished; rather, it no longer supports “production” usage of the online cloud storage service. For many existing users, this does not pose a major problem since the Atmos production service is still available from a robust Atmos partner ecosystem including AT&T, Hosted Solutions and PEER1, creating an easy migration path. Nonetheless, the shutdown has prompted many in the media, analyst and user community to question what happens when a cloud storage provider shuts down without a clean migration path.

With CloudArray, the answer is simple: you migrate your data to one of the many providers CloudArray supports. Because CloudArray masks the provider specific APIs and allows applications to connect to cloud storage via standard protocols, such as iSCSI or any file system layered on top, moving data between providers is simple. With the option of full local copies, you can always have a copy of your data on-premise as well. If your primary data resides in the cloud, why not have a copy locally? As an added benefit, CloudArray allows you to store data on multiple providers simultaneously. Multiple secure copies of data mean improved data availability.

While the shutdown of EMC Atmos online may send a cautionary message to some, you can rest assured products such as CloudArray have been specifically designed to protect users from cloud storage lock-in and the associated risks. We knew cloud provider lock-in was a concern when we started TwinStrata. Even our name, TwinStrata (which means dual clouds), was chosen to acknowledge the requirement for more than one provider.

So if you’re thinking of deploying cloud storage, download CloudArray and breathe easy…

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Fun with Cloud Storage: EMC “Atmos in a Box” with CloudArray

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

by Greg Roody

With EMC’s recent announcements of Atmos-VE (virtual edition), and the ability to set up Atmos as a VM for either production or test, the possibilities for evaluating a Private Cloud environment for free  just became easier.

Well, to be clear, Atmos-VE itself isn’t free, you have to buy it, but “Atmos in a Box” (AiaB) is free and publically available for people to try and learn on.   We have actually been using it for quite a while for development and test, and it works very well.

Luckily, I don’t need to describe the solution for you since Chad Sakac does an excellent job in his Virtual Geek blog.  He also provides download and installation instructions if you would like to try it.

And of course, CloudArray™ will connect to your AiaB environment as easily as Atmos-VE or any of the Atmos hardware based services available from our partners like AT&T Synaptics, Hosted Solutions, or even Atmos On-line (www.atmosonline.com).  You can even use CloudArray to move data between Clouds if that becomes necessary.

So what does CloudArray bring to the table for Atmos?

Atmos itself, like other Cloud Storage platforms, communicates natively with clients using a rich set of API’s.   You are of course free to develop new applications using those API’s, or you can use CloudArray as a SAN gateway to your Atmos storage device.  Any application server in your environment that can mount volumes using iSCSI can connect to your Atmos storage pools, without the need to reprogram them or manage them any differently than you do today.  You gain self service provisioning, reporting, zero footprint snapshots, compression, encryption, and all the other advanced features that CloudArray provides.

And since CloudArray is also a VM based software solution, there is no requirement to lay in a lot of very expensive, sole-purpose hardware to either evaluate or deploy a solution.  CloudArray is free to try for 30 days, so lay in your AiaB  environment, add CloudArray, and start using your Private Storage cloud in a purely test environment.  Since it’s all virtual, you already know the drill to move from test to production.

CloudArray is a natural companion to Atmos in building your Private Cloud.  Applications like Exchange 2010, Oracle, backup and archive solutions, and virtually any legacy application can start to take advantage or your new infrastructure.

You have real business applications that can benefit from Private Cloud Storage.  CloudArray can help you connect them.

Give it a try, it’s all free (some assembly required however).

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Cloud Storage That Solves Business Problems — Customer Proof Points

Monday, May 24th, 2010

This weekend, I was glancing through a blog by George Crump entitled “When To Use Cloud Storage?” George concludes “Cloud storage providers and ISVs should focus on solving the business problem, not on the value of putting a bunch of data out in the internet.” We couldn’t agree more with that statement.

You may have seen our press announcement today regarding two recent customer wins through our partner Tricore Solutions. Let’s look closely at the customer use cases: Color Kinetics, a division of Phillips, is using CloudArray to improve their Oracle RMAN backup process. Tape costs disappear, backups complete faster and restore speeds improve. Tanya Creations, a large jewelry manufacturer is using CloudArray to enable Microsoft Exchange 2010 off-site replication and recovery, providing enterprise-class availability for their email system; all without the capital and administrative burden of building and managing a secondary site.

The message from these customers goes a lot deeper than removing cloud storage adoption hurdles to create a new tier of data storage. At the end of the day, CloudArray enabled business solutions that improved the operation of each respective enterprise. The cost savings over traditional off-site storage solutions makes the case even stronger.

It’s no secret that IT departments that were once technology-driven have become more and more business-driven. While cloud storage technology may or may not be a business priority today, compelling solutions for protecting and enhancing access to business data certainly are.

More to come…

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Posted in Customer Use Case, backup, replication | 1 Comment »

A Move to Cloud Storage, Companies Re-Think Data Protection Strategies

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Ongoing discussions with customers on their challenges with existing data protection solutions are leading to changes within their data center. Customers are frustrated with the current data protection process. More specifically, storing information off-site on tape where it can take anywhere from a few hours to as much as a week to restore information. “This is just plain unacceptable and costly”. Human intervention, misappropriation of data, special security transports for tapes that contain certain types of information are all adding to the latency and cost of storing and retrieving data off-site and on tape.

New technologies and solutions with ROI measured in months are driving the need for change. Once such technology is Cloud storage. One of the many uses for Cloud storage is as a target device for data protection applications. Meaning, as opposed to pointing a data protection application to a tape device or even a disk system, point it to the Cloud. Easily accessible from anywhere around the globe, companies [applications] can securely store and access data in real time, cost effectively and with ease. Tape management and off-site tape storage challenges are mitigated or eliminated.

In the Solutions section of TwinStrata.com and on their respective blog we provide a list of data protection solutions and Cloud storage providers that are qualified to operate with CloudArray software. The list of data protection applications are from well established companies such as Oracle (RMAN), Symantec (Backup Exec), Vizioncore (VRanger Pro) and younger companies such as Veeam, PHD Virtual (esXpress). Cloud storage providers include Amazon.com (S3), EMC Atmos, AT&T and others. These applications and providers work together with CloudArray software to protect data and quickly retrieve information at a moments notice.

Check back from time to time, we will be adding more applications to the list of CloudArray supported applications and Cloud storage providers.

Also, Twinstrata is offering a free 30-day trial of CloudArray software. Click here for link.

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