Global-storage provider Scale Eight Inc. announced the immediate availability of the Scale Eight Global Storage Service.
Building on the massive scalability of Scale Eight’s existing managed storage platform, the Global Storage Service enables customers to bypass limitations in Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) technology and unify file storage across any number of geographic locations.
The Global Storage Service, which is in use today at twenty-five customer sites around the world, provides global virtualization of storage resources, allowing customers to eliminate redundant local storage expenditures.
The Scale Eight Global Storage Service is a fully managed service that enables customers to unify file storage across any number of geographic locations. The Global Storage Service provides dramatically reduced total cost of ownership for global storage and is comprised of four distinct components:
* Storage Centers: Scale Eight Storage Centers use patent-pending parallel systems technologies to provide massively scalable storage and the network capacity to serve customers around the world. Storage Centers are located in Santa Clara, Calif.; Sterling, Va.; London, and Tokyo. Every file stored with Scale Eight is automatically mirrored between at least two of these Storage Centers.
* Access Methods: The 1U (1.75″ high) Scale Eight Global Storage Port appliance contains a high-performance file system cache. When mounted via NFS or CIFS, it appears as a network drive with massive capacity and provides a transparent gateway to Scale Eight Storage Centers. In addition, Scale Eight URLs (8RLs) allow authorized access to any file directly from a Web browser to support mobile users and Internet applications.
* Global File System (8FS): The Scale Eight Global File System, built on patent-pending technology, provides customers with a single file system image across any number of geographically separate locations. By extending file systems beyond the LAN, 8FS combines with Global Storage Ports to eliminate the need for redundant local file storage hardware.
* Service Manager: The new Web-based Scale Eight Service Manager provides customers with the ability to monitor, manage, and control global storage and bandwidth from a single tool. A click of the mouse lets users geographically replicate entire file systems, add accounts, and gain insight into usage trends. Furthermore, Service Manager’s sophisticated monitoring capabilities ensure that precise management and billing information can be generated at multiple levels of an organization.
The Scale Eight Global Storage Service is now available. Applications include file serving, media asset distribution, and document sharing and collaboration. Pricing starts at $30 per managed, mirrored gigabyte per month, with discounts based on usage levels. Plans start at 300 GB per month. The standard Service Level Agreement provides for 99.99% availability, guaranteed data protection, and unlimited data capacity with no need to provision. Service levels are monitored 24×7 by the Scale Eight Service Management Center in San Francisco.
