ClearSky Data has announced the launch of its global storage network, a breakthrough service that simplifies the entire enterprise data lifecycle as a fully managed service. The ClearSky service combines the performance and availability of local enterprise storage with the scalability, agility and economics of the cloud, liberating overburdened IT teams from managing primary, backup and disaster recovery storage infrastructure. ClearSky delivers data where it’s needed, enterprise-ready and fully optimized to eliminate the cost and data center footprint of traditional storage solutions.
IT leaders often cite storage management as one of their biggest challenges. Beyond the expense and difficulty of categorizing and managing performance and availability throughout the data lifecycle, IT has to respond quickly to changes in how applications are run – in data centers, colocation facilities, or in private or public clouds – and they typically have small teams with which to do it. The ClearSky service dramatically simplifies that challenge with the ability to plug into storage infrastructure as a fully managed service from points of presence (PoPs) in major metro areas. The resulting service-level agreement (SLA)-based service delivers hundreds of thousands of input/output operations per second (IOPs) and less than two milliseconds of latency, providing the performance of a local storage array with the comprehensive security, low latency and high availability required for enterprise applications.
The ClearSky service enables workload portability and mobility between traditional and cloud environments, eliminating the need for storage infrastructure in multiple sites and freeing storage administrators from endless infrastructure management activities, so they can focus on new initiatives and growth. Users can quickly tap into unlimited amounts of storage when and where they need it, without the capital costs, delays and complexity IT has struggled with for decades.
ClearSky Data’s patent-pending Smart Tiered Caching™ technology automatically distributes data across a network of geographically distributed cache layers with built-in redundancy in order to provide optimal performance based on evolving usage requirements and customer policies:
- Hot data: cached at the edge next to customer applications
- Warm data: cached in a ClearSky PoP within 120 miles of the customer
- All data: protected with multiple copies in the ClearSky Backing Cloud
The ClearSky service, which leverages VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes as a key component, allows users to set storage policies, provision and add capacity on-demand, and access system alerts and updates 24/7/365. The offering also eliminates latency by using dedicated, redundant private networks and optimization techniques that minimize network traffic. The end-to-end service is easily accessed from anywhere by customers through a Web-based portal and integrates into existing management infrastructure. Users add capacity as they grow, paying only for what they actually need.
