Panzura Data Flex Set of Hyper-Converged Cloud Capabilities for Users of Global File System CloudFS

Panzura, Inc. has announced Data Flex, a set of hyper-converged cloud capabilities for users of the company’s global file system CloudFS.

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The new features are designed to provide more flexible access, management, and visibility of unstructured data across an entire hybrid multi-cloud environment, under a single pane of glass using Panzura solutions. The Data Flex release combines upgrades to the company’s CloudFS for true multi-cloud performance with enterprise storage uptime, and multi-hypervisor usage at scale.

The release of CloudFS delivers anticipated expansion of cloud mirroring for flawless availability and redundancy. A new mixed mode capability, which will be rolled out to individual customers, enables both SMB (server message block) and NFS (network file system) connections in parallel providing a single, unified view of all cloud-based storage volumes. Hyper-V support broadens CloudFS native integrations by extending out-of-the-box deployment to Microsoft virtualization environments.

“We’re now in a multi-cloud world, and never has an effective multi-cloud strategy been more crucial to the success of the enterprise. With the expanded multi-cloud capabilities introduced with the Data Flex release of CloudFS, Panzura is aiming to put the enterprise squarely at the center of a tremendous opportunity to modernize their core business using flexible data management options,” said Johnny Yu, research manager, IDC.

Data availability
Cloud provider outages-like the recent, well-publicized rash of blackout events among major cloud hyperscalers-have intensified interest in multi-cloud strategies for risk mitigation. By early this year, IDC predicts that 70% of enterprises will deploy unified hybrid multi-cloud technologies, tools and processes to support BC and other key operational outcomes ^[1].

With the introduction of enterprise-grade HA for data held in CloudFS, built-in multi-cloud orchestration and automation helps customers manage risk more effectively and resiliently. In the case of a service interruption or security issue in a single provider, CloudFS now immediately routes to another cloud provider, an organization’s private cloud, or both.

With this feature enabled, CloudFS simultaneously places the same set of data in two separate object stores in real time, providing true multi-cloud redundancy. If a primary cloud goes down, it will failover data, applications and workloads to a secondary cloud store, letting users seamlessly continue work with no loss of data while the primary object store remains offline.

“If you want to build a truly data-driven organization, you have to expect the unexpected. When you lose access to crucial data, financial losses mount with every minute that passes-and the reputational damage can be crippling. With the new failover capabilities of Panzura CloudFS, you will continue working as if an outage never happened,” said Edward M.L. Peters, Ph.D, chief innovation officer.

Even in a large-scale outage scenario, cloud mirroring in the company’s global file system automatically recognizes, validates and fails over to a secondary object store, and then re-syncs the impacted storage volumes when they come back online. As a result, the company’s customers get maximum uptime and value out of their clouds, and can also remain in compliance with strict SLAs for regulatory and contractual uptime mandates.

Mixed mode and Hyper-V support
In the Data Flex release, a new mixed mode capability in CloudFS allows unified access to data and applications on file shares through both SMB and NFS protocols. For example, when a file is updated within an SMB server, those leveraging an NFS connection are left without any visibility into those updates and vice versa. Mixed mode allows users with file shares and storage via both types of connections to access, share and update the same data, eliminating redundant workflows and data silos, and facilitating more efficient and productive collaboration.

CloudFS support for Hyper-V deployments simplifies management of data and applications with fewer disparate components to oversee. IT departments can consolidate business-critical data and native applications for SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint that require low latency and performance access, backup and storage. CloudFS supports both hypervisor environments VMware and Microsoft.

“Our customers operate in an environment that can span virtualizations and cloud providers. It only makes sense that they want a simplified way to access, share and collaborate on files no matter what multi-hypervisor or multi-cloud configuration they use. The Data Flex release expands the virtualization footprint of Panzura CloudFS with compatibility for wide-ranging deployments, and empowers hyper-converged support for even more diverse use cases,” added Peters.

^[1] IDC, IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2020 Predictions, Doc # US45599219, Oct 2019.