FalconStor, which was among the first software developers to automate the storage disaster recovery process more than 10 years ago, has launched a new version of its frontline FreeStor product for use in hybrid clouds.
Based on the company’s fit-in-anywhere storage platform, FreeStor, released Oct. 17, enables enterprises and cloud service providers to utilize the performance and reliability benefits of block-based enterprise storage within a hybrid model.
FalconStor is all about automating the movement of data in storage and making it available when and where it’s needed in any production environment. The Melville, New York-based company does this for its own labeled products and for a number of other, larger storage companies.
“Nobody’s creating any new data services or data types,” CEO Gary Quinn told eWEEK. “Now it’s all about combining the storage with the workload—maybe it’s in a (virtual machine), maybe it’s not—but combining them together and moving them to the right destination for service, performance and cost—that’s what we’re all about. That’s what people are going through right now as they transform their infrastructures.”
Not Everybody Moving Everything to the Cloud
“Not everybody is moving everything to the cloud. A majority of data still resides on-premises for certain reasons,” he continued. “A customer we have now has 2,300 virtual machines, 1,500 of which are housed in a Verizon facility by them. The other 800 are distributed among the appropriate cloud vendors. We enable all of that movement.
“People are just looking for the right way to make sure information is accessible, it’s delivering for the business, and that’s more than just replicating, backing up, et cetera,” Quinn said.
FalconStor is easing up on pricing: Users pay only for the storage of their primary data, not for copy data, he said. However, since each system is a bit different, specific pricing information will have to come from the company on a case-by-case basis.
As it is now, costs are out of control, moving data is becoming costlier and users require common tools to avoid vendor lock-in, said Roy Illsley, principal analyst at Ovum.
Flexible Approach Needed for Many Users
“A new flexible approach is needed. Organizations need to have the freedom to choose the most appropriate storage platform that meets their pricing and performance level needs, whether that is on-premises, in the cloud or both (using a hybrid model). The new functionality that has been incorporated into FreeStor, offers users the ability to intelligently create a hybrid cloud that few other vendors can match,” Illsey said.
New benefits of FreeStor’s intelligent approach to flexible data management include:
—Simple, fair pricing: Organizations now only pay for licensing of their primary instance of data, not the total amount of storage consumed.
—Cloud enablement: Enables users to add public cloud storage to create a hybrid solution that can be managed through a single pane of glass.
—Secure multi-tenancy: Integrates with Active Directory or LDAP for authorization, access and audit compliance providing trustworthy security at all levels of an organization’s installation.
—Enhanced analytics: Enables core-to-edge decision-making abilities while providing information for proactive management of SLAs.
—Unified client management: Templated agent deployment, simplified configuration and updates and intelligent analytics from core to edge avoids business disruption.
—Performance optimization: Improved support for NVMe (non-volatile memory express) unlocks new levels of I/O and latency. The addition of Linux 7 compliance with enhanced, patented application acceleration and workload portability both on-premises and in the cloud brings faster zero-downtime configurations.
FreeStor for the cloud is currently available through FalconStor’s PartnerChoice resellers as well as direct. For more information or to schedule a demonstration, go here.