cleversafe

The public cloud: Friend or foe for storage vendors?

Last year, storage vendors were all about cloud. They saw major-league opportunities in the private, public, hybrid, and federated versions. No cloud was too big or too small. In fact, because clouds were "infinitely scalable," there was no limit to the number of yotta bytes they could sell.

Storage users and data center storage administrators in particular were decidedly more sanguine. You say cloud is a new services delivery model? Hey storage vendors, where have you been lately? We've been all about services delivery for some time now. Tell us something about cloud we don't know. … Read more

On encryption and why it's overrated

I ran across a recent blog post by storage vendor Cleversafe titled "Three Reasons Why Encryption is Overrated," and as I suspected it generated a lot of discussion in online forums (LinkedIn, Google Groups, log-in required for both) dedicated to those issues.

Beyond the sensationalist headline, the post does raise some interesting points for consideration on the topic of encryption.

Future processing power--In the future, malicious hackers will be able to crack older encrypted files due to increases in processing speed.

Key management--An encrypted file has a key to unlock it. Lots of files means lots of keys. … Read more

Is RAID storage living on borrowed time?

The basic idea of RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) storage is combining multiple small, cheap disk drives into an array of disk drives (appearing to the computer as a single logical storage unit) that yields performance exceeding that of a SLED (Single Large Expensive Drive).

RAID offers many advantages over the use of single hard disks, including higher data security, fault tolerance, improved availability, and integrated capacity.

That said, RAID was invented more than 30 years ago and simply wasn't designed to work in the terabyte system world that is commonplace today. In fact, RAID is clearly beyond … Read more

Considerations for building a storage cloud

One of the arguments in favor of internal clouds is that they can be purpose-built, meaning that you can apply a cloud architecture to a specific problem. One area where this makes a great deal of sense is storage, and specifically distributed storage.

I spoke with Cleversafe CEO Chris Gladwin to get some ideas on considerations in building a storage cloud. I wrote previously about the Chicago Museum of Broadcast Communications' use of Cleversafe's Dispersed Storage to store and deliver terabytes of digitized radio and television content.

1) Ensure that your performance will scale Your customers won't be … Read more

Chicago museum turns to open-source storage

Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) collects, preserves, and presents historic and contemporary radio and television content with the purpose of educating, informing, and entertaining the public through its archives, public programs, screenings, exhibits, publications and online access to its resources.

MBC also runs Museum.tv--which stores and delivers terabytes of digitized radio and television content. Currently, they are featuring a 1984 senatorial debate including Roland Burris--whom you may recognize as the senator just appointed to fill Barack Obama's vacancy (check out the protests at the start of the debate and how the moderator handles it).

Through … Read more

Open-source Cleversafe earns a WSJ Technology Innovation Award

The Wall Street Journal has announced its 2008 Technology Innovation Awards. Among the heavyweights on the list - Salesforce, Applied Materials, GlaxoSmithKline, etc. - is open-source storage vendor, Cleversafe, a company that I've long followed and admired.

It's great to see Cleversafe getting its due credit, especially from a list of judges that includes the CTO of Agilent, EVP of Software at SAP, and more distinguished names.

Here's what caught the judges' eyes:

[Cleversafe's] Dispersed Storage software breaks files up into slices and then sends the slices over the Internet to multiple storage locations on a … Read more

Cleversafe launches dispersed-storage products

Cleversafe, a start-up with a new way to protect data by dispersing it across many storage devices, is making the move from prototype to product.

The company's basic idea is to break up data into little bits that are stored on multiple devices, overlapping the bits so it doesn't matter if some devices fail. The approach, which is embodied in open-source software anyone can try, can be used to spread data across multiple storage devices in a rack or multiple data centers across the globe.

And now potential customers can start pricing out equipment to see if it'… Read more

Cleversafe updates distributed storage idea

Open-source software start-up Cleversafe has a new twist on an ages-old warning not to put all your eggs in one basket.

If it were up to the Chicago-based company, you'd protect your data by putting slices of your eggs in multiple baskets scattered across the globe.

In the earlier version of the company's software, you could reconstruct your entire egg collection even if five of eleven baskets were destroyed in earthquakes, swamped by tsunamis, consumed in an overheated data center inferno or otherwise lost. A new version released Tuesday, though, lets users choose their own egg slice and … Read more