AWS Re:Invent 2015: 11 Storage Products For AWS Clouds

Cloud Storage On Full Display

Storage is a key building block of public and private clouds, and that makes storage central to the recently concluded AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. The show drew 19,000 members of the Amazon community and introduced a barrage of features coming down the pipeline of the world's largest cloud.

At the show, lots of vendors -- including Barracuda Networks, Veritas, CTERA and CloudBerry Lab -- showed off an array of storage hardware and software taking advantage of Amazon Web Services for data migration, data protection, disaster recovery and other purposes.

Intrigued by the possibilities? Turn the page to visit AWS re:Invent and some of the storage technologies shown there.

Actifio Sky For AWS

Actifio used AWS re:Invent 2015 to showcase its capabilities for delivering AWS-based backup, disaster recovery and test data management solutions as part of its Actifio Sky for AWS solution, introduced in July.

Actifio Sky for AWS virtualizes data to help businesses modernize backup and disaster recovery, accelerate application development, and synchronize data more easily across data center, remote and cloud-based infrastructures. The Waltham, Mass.-based company said Actifio Sky for AWS significantly cuts unnecessary replication of production data by improving management techniques through storage virtualization, while improving control and accelerating performance of production environments. Actifio Sky for AWS is available through the Amazon Web Services Marketplace.

AWS Import/Export Snowball

Amazon itself made storage news at AWS re:Invent with the introduction of the AWS Import/Export Snowball, a new appliance targeted at improving the performance of the AWS Import/Export service.

Customers looking to move large amounts of data to the Amazon cloud can create a job in the AWS Management Console and a Snowball appliance will be automatically shipped. The customer can then attach the Snowball to a local network, download and run the Snowball client, and then use the client to select the file directories to transfer to the appliance with 256-bit encryption. The client can transfer up to 50 TBs per appliance. At that point, the E Ink shipping label on the appliance is updated with the ship-to address. Once received by Amazon, the Snowball transfers the data to the cloud and the appliance is erased.

Asigra AWS EBS Snapshot Manager

The Asigra AWS EBS Snapshot Manager from Toronto-based Asigra lets service providers and application administrators quickly and easily create a snapshot schedule through a Web-based GUI to automate the taking of snapshots from one or more AWS EC2 instances. The application streamlines the management of EC2 instances with automated snapshot functions including restore, copy, delete, migration between regions, start, stop and launch.

The Asigra AWS EBS Snapshot Manager also lets users create, manage and delete virtual machine snapshots on AWS using automated rules, and lets users schedule snapshots any time of the day, week or month.

Barracuda Message Archiver for AWS GovCloud (US) Region

The Barracuda Message Archiver for AWS GovCloud (US) region from Campbell, Calif.-based Barracuda Networks targets the email archiving needs of U.S. government agencies, nonprofits, educational institutions and private sector companies with stringent regulatory and compliance requirements.

Barracuda Message Archiver is designed to help organizations reduce email storage requirements by providing an easy, secure way to archive mail, set customizable email retention rules, designate auditors to apply litigation holds and help with eDiscovery and compliance.

CloudBerry Backup 4.5

CloudBerry Backup 4.5 from Newport Beach, Calif.-based CloudBerry Lab provides small and midsize businesses the ability to restore an image of a physical or virtual Windows server to Amazon EC2 so that they can run the server from the cloud even if the original physical server is destroyed in a disaster. This gives businesses the ability to continue operations while preparing for a full on-site restoration.

CloudBerry Backup 4.5 also adds support for Amazon Standard-IA, the new cold-storage option in Amazon S3, and allows the ability to back up and restore NTFS permissions for files and folders.

Cloudian HyperStore Storage System

The Cloudian HyperStore Storage System from San Mateo, Calif.-based Cloudian is a peer-to-peer software-defined storage platform that customers can use to get an enterprise-grade, S3-compliant object storage system on industry standard servers. The application's multi-tenanted and multi-interface design supports multiple applications running on the same platform. It can be used by service providers to deploy and manage both public and private clouds and by enterprises to maintain private and hybrid clouds for unlimited data scale and protection.

At AWS re:Invent, Cloudian also announced a new 30-day S3 Guarantee for HyperStore software to let customers try it with no risk.

CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform

New York-based CTERA said its CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform now supports the recently introduced Amazon S3 -- Infrequent Access storage tier. The Infrequent Access tier provides a cost-effective option for storing and retaining long-term data.

CTERA’s Enterprise File Services Platform for AWS targets large enterprise and service provider customers with the ability to combine Amazon S3 with on-premises cloud storage gateway appliances, managed end-point software agents, and mobile apps in a unified, hybrid architecture that delivers storage, data protection and collaboration capabilities as part of a single solution.

SoftNAS Cloud for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Houston-based SoftNAS showed the latest version of its SoftNAS Cloud, which extends native AWS storage including EBS and S3, to create an enterprise-class, full-featured cloud-based NAS appliance. SoftNAS Cloud for RHEL supports a cloud NAS of up to 20 TBs. Larger capacities are available directly through SoftNAS.

With SoftNAS Cloud, customers can migrate mission-critical applications to the AWS cloud in minutes without a physical storage appliance and without specialized training, according to the vendor. The cloud-based NAS appliances offer NFS, CIFS and iSCSI support, five nines (99.999 percent) reliability, and cross-zone high availability for Amazon virtual private clouds.

Sungard AS AWS Recovery Solution

The new Sungard AS AWS Recovery Solution gives customers backup, vaulting and recovery services in the AWS U.S. East and West regions. The Wayne, Pa.-based recovery services provider said the new service helps assure customers that their data is replicated quickly and fully to give them continuous access to applications that perform critical functions.

The Sungard AS AWS Recovery Solution is based on Boston-based Actifio's technologies, services and proprietary orchestration integration with the Amazon Web Services platform.

Veritas NetBackup 7.7.1

Veritas, Mountain View, Calif., used AWS re:Invent to introduce upgrades to its NetBackup offering that provide enterprise businesses with an expanded backup and recovery choice for the new Amazon S3 Standard-IA storage service. Veritas NetBackup 7.7.1 now gives customers an easy backup and recovery integration with Amazon S3 Standard-IA (Infrequent Access) storage, with a promise of high service levels for the recovery of archived data on AWS.

As with Veritas NetBackup 7.7, this update also includes NetBackup Self-Service, which provides enterprises and service providers a single online storefront for backup and recovery service offerings, and provides such management capabilities include service level agreement (SLA) measurement, notification, chargeback and reporting.

Zadara Storage Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA)

Zadara Storage, an Irvine, Calif.-based provider of enterprise storage-as-a-service, used AWS re:Invent 2015 to unveil new high-performance options for its Zadara Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) solution. This includes the new Zadara VPSA 1600 series engine, the company’s largest controller, with more cores and memory and a larger maximum cache than previous offerings. Zadara said the VPSA 1600 targets applications that require high throughput or IOPs as well as intensive replication and encryption.

The company also showcased enhancements to its Multi-Zone High Availability feature that protect data against issues ranging from application corruption to facility-level failure. With Multi-Zone HA provides both file (NAS) and block (SAN) storage with automatic synchronous replication of data across a metropolitan area network and auto-failover in the event of facility-level failure.