Cloudian pops NAS joystick on HyperStore object boxes

Object storage filer front end to ease the load for primary filers

Cloudian says you can store unstructured data files on its HyperStore object storage, through a HyperFile NAS Controller, and not burden primary data filers with the stuff, saving lots of lovely money and getting loads of scalability.

HyperFile involves a 2U NAS controller sitting atop one or more 4U HyperStore object storage nodes. Each node can hold 840TB of data and a 3-stack can store 2.52PB. Add the NAS controller and that takes up 14U.

The NAS controller has a non-disruptive failover. It has dual processor modules, with an active:passive design, dual power supplies, hot-swap drives and several caching options.

SMB (CIFS), NFS and FTP protocols are supported, plus the S3 object storage onesdirect to HyperStore, and it is POSIX-compliant. Write Once Read Many (WORM) snapshots are supported and it has Active Directory and LDAP authentication.

There are quality of service features, multi-tenancy support and geo-distribution plus a migration engine. All these features are essential, Cloudian argues, for enterprise NAS use, and it claims its the only object storage supplier with them.

With multi-tenancy you can have dedicated NAS controllers per namespace to eliminate the “noisy neighbour” problem and guarantee performance at that level. Alternatively you can have a single, global namespace.

Cloudian HyperFile

The migration engine eases the transfer of files from filers, or from proprietary systems such as EMC Centera, to the HyperFile system. First HyperFile maps and indexes all the mounted file systems. Then data writes are written to HyperFile with reads redirected to the filers while migration takes place in the background.

In a geo-distributed arrangement there can be replication and/or migration between the sites.

The HyperStore backend talks S3 to Amazon and interacts with Azure and the Google Cloud Platform.

Cloudian argues that HyperStore fills a price/performance gap between fast enterprise NAS systems from NetApp and Isilon, costing $0.06/GB/month, and slow access tape libraries such as those from Quantum and HPE costing $0.005/GB/month^*. It says HyperFile has a 70 per cent lower TCO - $0.18/GB/month - than the enterprise NAS products, and access is 100 times faster than the tape systems. The basic HyperFile system, with storage, starts at $0.005/GB/month.

We don't know if it's as fast as the higher-performance NetApp and Isilon filers but it is, Cloudian says, suited for large capacity, less latency-sensitive applications, providing scalable file serving, capacity storage and WORM compliance. You can migrate up to 80 per cent of existing NAS capacity to Cloudian, the less latency-sensitive stuff, and its spreadsheets show you saving 65 per cent of your spend over three years.

Target markets for HyperFile include home directory, workgroup collaboration, medical imaging, engineering files, legal documents, financial records, media and entertainment assets, and video surveillance data.

There are two appliance configurations: Basic has the basic HW and filer software plus the migration engine, and the software licence is included with HyperStore. It costs under $10,000. The Enterprise version is licensed by capacity and adds snapshots, WORM, geo-distribution, global namespace, plus file versioning in the 3.2 release.

Alternatively you can just get the SW and run it in VMs, with either perpetual or subscription licences. Cloudian HyperFile is available now. ® * Based on Gartner TCO numbers.