NetApp Insight: Talon FAST for Cloud Volumes NetApp Ontap

Talon Storage Solutions, Inc. was showcasing its technology for cloud storage consolidation at NetApp Insight 2018.

The company and NetApp, Inc. jointly provide customers with global access to centralized, resilient, secure Cloud Volumes ONTAP storage repositories regardless of user geography or location, and without the need for distributed file servers, replication, or synchronization.

According to the Enterprise Storage Forum storage Trends 2018 report, 50% of global enterprises are targeting cloud storage a primary investment area over the coming two years, driven by their top four concerns of (1) aging storage gear, (2) limited capacity, (3) high cost of operation, and (4) security/compliance issues.

The combination of the firm and NetApp technologies deliver a topology allowing distributed file servers to be consolidated into a single Cloud Volumes ONTAP instance in a secure and highly managed environment, thereby reducing both cost and risk while increasing business agility. Major hyperscaler platforms supported include AWS, Azure and Oracle Cloud.

“We’re seeing continued interest from enterprise clients to consolidate file server footprints into cloud platforms as they look to leverage the flexibility, scale and security of those environments for their global users,” said Greg Schulz, founder, analyst firm server, StorageIO. “It’s a fundamental ROI economic model that is a companion to the usual technical speeds and feeds driven decision making. It’s one thing to hear vendor claims about costs and savings, it’s another to see how significant the savings can be. Solutions such as those from Talon are enable customers to boost productivity while maximizing their ROI, now that’s true storage effectiveness!“

Talon FAST enables a global fabric which gives virtually any enterprise location the ability to seamlessly access and use cloud-based file shares as they traditionally have their local file servers, without changing user experience or workflow. The combination of a distributed network file system, intelligent caching and global locking allows globally distributed enterprises to operate under a central storage system view. This ability to ‘centralize’ data has large benefits as enterprises decommission costly-to-maintain file servers around the globe. FAST optimizes the flow of information through the enterprise, enabling all locations and users to work from the same set of data.

“While our technology is truly storage-agnostic, the reality is that we work with some of the most demanding users of unstructured data in the world – and many trust their most critical data to the ONTAP platform,” said Andy Mullen, SVP, sales and marketing, Talon. “Using Talon FAST to extend Cloud Volumes ONTAP resources to users anywhere in the world removes the cost, risk, and burden of managing on-premises file servers while delivering both documented ROI benefits and the stability/security available from today’s major hyperscalers.“

Storage agnostic FAST is available as a site based annual subscription from the firm’s network of partners or directly via authorized cloud marketplaces.