Nirvanix and Ocarina Partner to Ease Data Storage in the Cloud

Cloud storage provider Nirvanix has teamed up with Ocarina to help solution providers optimize storage solutions for faster, easier and more secure access to customers’ data in the cloud.

Nirvanix’s Storage Delivery Network (SDN) already leverages the power of cloud storage using its CloudNAS software-only NAS solution that provides data transfers to any of Nirvanix's globally distributed storage nodes.

While cloud storage already offers a compelling cost savings and performance benefit over on-premises storage, using Ocarina’s technology can allow solution providers to deduplicate and compress customers’ data before moving it to the cloud, realizing even greater savings when using data reduction technologies in conjunction with CloudNAS.

Because deduplication eliminates redundant data and compresses existing files to their smallest size before transport, Nirvanix and Ocarina’s solution can reduce the amount of data being moved, thus resulting in significant additional savings, says Peter Pistek, director of product management at Nirvanix.

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“Over the last two years, customers have asked how they can integrate deduplication and compression to optimize their storage,” Pistek says. “Customers are also interested in how dedupe and compression can speed throughput on their storage networks and optimize their capacity.”  

Ocarina's patented three-step ECOsystem—Extract, Correlate and Optimize—is a content-aware optimization technology that can deliver 10-to-1 reduction in file size from applications such as Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, ZIP files and rich media files that are driving the growth of online storage.

Pistek says the Nirvanix and Ocarina solution is a great fit for solution providers whose customers generate huge repositories of high-quality digital data, such as photos, video, digital surveillance, health care and research organizations.

For customers like these, a tape-based backup solution can be extremely expensive and also very difficult to access if files must be retrieved.

“Customers like those in health care, media, security and others with huge amounts of data find it difficult to deduplicate and compress these files before moving them to a cloud,” says Jim Zierick, president and CEO of Nirvanix. “We chose to partner with Ocarina because of the great success they’ve seen in compression and dedupe in the media and health care industries.”

For customers in the health care, pharmaceutical and research industries, it’s critical that the data they store be secure, but must also remain easily accessed for regulatory compliance purposes, says Pistek.

“A lot of these customers generate reports, fill databases, generate digital images, spreadsheets and the like that need to be maintained for reference or compliance,” he says. “For these types of data, customers may not access the files regularly, but when they are needed, it’s crucial for them to have quick access. Tape-based or even disk-based retrieval is going to be time-consuming and really expensive.”

With Nirvanix and Ocarina’s solution, however, Pistek says the ability to deduplicate and compress data inline and quickly store or retrieve files from the cloud can offer customers a simple, secure solution that is much less costly.

“This solution is an easy way for customers and solution providers to use Ocarina to move data to and from the cloud,” Pistek says.