A screenshot displaying some of the monitoring and reporting functions of ParaScale version 2.0
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Cloud storage software developer ParaScale (www.parascale.com) rolled out the details for the 2.0 release of its ParaScale Cloud Storage software last week, introducing a new range of features designed to add support for popular APIs, open standards and commodity hardware, and an enhanced focus on backup and virtual machines.
One of the key features of the new version is its focus on the backup and recovery of virtual machines.
The ParaScale platform, and cloud storage in general, is already especially well suited to the storage requirements of virtualized environments – the virtualized file system on commodity hardware is flexible, and more compatible with the virtual environment than a traditional network-attached storage system. Connecting a NAS to a system of many virtual machines is pretty well recognized as a network administration challenge connected to virtualization.
But with 2.0, says Jack Norris, vice president of marketing and business development at ParaScale, the software has introduced a new focus on providing backup and restoration for those virtual machines, in addition to straightforward file storage.
“With 2.0 we’re focused on the backup and recovery of virtual machines and providing an alternative to having everything housed in the SAN environment,” says Norris. “In the case of the backup, we’re backing up the virtual machine, the data, to the ParaScale cloud, and in the event of failure, those virtual machines are booting directly off ParaScale. And then the virtual machines are running their respective data off the cloud as well. So, recovery in seconds.”
And while the backup and recovery functions can obviously be applied to enterprise environments, many of the functions in the 2.0 release of the software came from, or were affected somewhere down the line, by the requests and feedback of service provider customers.
Among those features is the support for multi-tenancy and user self-service through the SOAP and REST web services APIs. Through the APIs, third party applications and control panels can be written to enable storage provisioning, and other ParaScale functions like configuration and administration.
“We’ve received a lot of interest from service providers that are trying to empower their direct customers,” says Norris. “As an example, when they’re provisioning a virtual machine, they can check a box and provision the storage at the same time.”
Among service providers – which, in the case of ParaScale tends to mean companies ranging from colocation providers to dedicated and VPS hosting providers and more service- and application-oriented managed service providers – the cloud storage platform doesn’t necessarily translate directly into cloud storage as a product, though it quite often does.
The obvious other use of cloud storage technology is as part of a larger suite of cloud computing solutions, or a more holistic cloud offering, of which storage is one part. The more interesting uses, says Norris, often involve using the cloud storage technology as a part of the back-end infrastructure of a product that might not expressly include a description of the cloud storage platform – combining ParaScale with a content management application to power content management as a service.
Carpathia Hosting (www.carpathahosting.com), a large customer of ParaScale’s, and a company that started with a fairly basic cloud storage installation, is a good example of a company building from that foundation, says Norris. “They started out and definitely focused on cloud storage, but very quickly figured out, they can integrate different applications on top of ParaScale and take advantage of the storage nodes, to run applications directly on that. They have an anti-virus solution, as a relatively straightforward example.”
ParaScale release 2.0 also includes enhanced reporting and monitoring functions, an extension of the platform’s self-healing and diagnostic functions, which existed in the previous versions.
The 2.0 software will release November 30, 2009, available by download from the company’s website. The ParaScale website also includes a great deal of supplemental information on the product, including a reference library and TCO calculator.
Pricing is based on the volume of information being stored, starting at 95 cents per GB.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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