(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Cloud storage solution developer ParaScale (www.parascale.com) has unveiled a software-only solution that can be applied to any standard Linux platform, enabling hundreds of servers to be clustered together to act as a file repository with massive capacity and parallel throughput.
According to the company’s Monday announcement at Sys-Con’s Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, ParaScale Cloud Storage software version 1.2 is available for immediate purchase, with pricing based on the physical capacity within the cloud with deployments starting in North America at a list price of $1.05/GB.
It is already being used by leading enterprise and service provider organizations including Blue Coat Systems, Carpathia Hosting, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Stanford Genome Technology Center. Combining ParaScale software with standard servers, managed service providers can build different types of public clouds and offer a variety of storage cloud services, and enterprises can build their own private clouds within their own firewalls.
“I’m proud of the ParaScale team today as they deliver the industry’s first shrink-wrapped, cloud storage solution,” ParaScale chief executive officer Sajai Krishnan said in a statement. “Additionally, the team has also delivered another first with very broad applicability – the industry’s first object-based cluster file system capable of scale-out on standard Linux hardware… At ParaScale, our early customers are excited about storage cloud implementations and dreaming up use cases we haven’t considered, striving for new levels of economy, operational management, capacity and performance scale-out.”
Having economically optimized much of its infrastructure such as its workstations, render farms, and operating systems, Sony Pictures Imageworks is now testing PCS to create a private storage cloud to improve the economics of its storage-intensive infrastructure, which has been a “holdout” in terms of its optimization strategy.
“We have been working with ParaScale since early in the beta process and we are impressed with the technology and flexibility of the software,” Sony Pictures Imageworks senior systems engineer Nick Bali said in a statement. “Having evaluated many storage technologies over the years, we are optimistic about finding a potential solution that scales in capacity and performance and targets our content heavy workloads, all the while leveraging standard Linux hardware.”
As cloud computing technology becomes increasingly relied upon to run critical applications, one of the walls that has kept cloud computing out of reach of enterprises has been the ability to create private clouds that adhere to corporate requirements. If the range of marquee customers that have used ParaScale technology to build storage clouds is any indication of the state of private clouds, the bulk file storage requirements for digital content and data archival applications are now within reach of many enterprises.
“Even in a slowing economy, data growth continues and IT managers struggle with cost and capacity challenges every day,” Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Terri McClure said in a statement. “Today, we are seeing an explosion in digital documents and rich media in all types of businesses. This presents significant challenges to storage teams who need to account for rapid scaling of capacity and performance in an environment that scrutinizes every capital expense. ParaScale Cloud Storage harnesses the power and cost-advantages of a standard Linux server with clustering software into an infrastructure solution that addresses the need to cost-efficiently store and manage huge amounts of unstructured data.”
According to the announcement, ParaScale software will soon be available through value-added resellers.
