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Elastifile adds NAS file access storage to Google Cloud Launcher
Israeli startup Elastifile launches NFS file access service in the Google cloud to provide hybrid cloud distributed file system functionality with the speed of flash
Elastifile has launched an NFS-based file access storage service in partnership with Google’s cloud marketplace, Cloud Launcher. It is a ready-to-deploy cloud iteration that extends its distributed scale-out NAS file system across on-premise and cloud locations.
The service provides file share access to 100% flash storage capacity in the Google cloud, supported by 3TB flash drives via VM instances or 10TB persistent SSDs.
Customers must contract to a minimum of three nodes in an Elastifile cluster in Google, which works out at $1.68 per hour for 10TB persistent flash drives and 50c per hour with 3TB local SSDs. The file system can, however, scale to hundreds of nodes, with a single namespace.
This price doesn’t include the cost of Google cloud instances. Customers need to reckon on costs of around $100 a month for an instance that comprises four vCPUs and 15GB of memory when monthly discounts are taken into account.
The cost of storage for organisations that manage large amounts of data can be reduced using Elastifile’s CloudConnect tiering functionality. This allows infrequently used data to be drained to less costly object storage while still maintaining file sharing access.
Deepak Mohan, IDC research director, said NAS access in the cloud had been limited to date. Google doesn’t have a native NAS offering in its but has offered a ZFS-based open source appliance, the Avere 100% flash FXT Edge Filer and the open source Gluster file system.
Meanwhile, Amazon provides its own NAS access in ECS, while its marketplace offers alternatives such as those from NetApp and SoftNAS. In the Micosoft cloud there is its own Azure Enterprise NAS, which comes from NetApp (which also recently acquired Avere).
For Mohan, the ability to offer a cloud NAS service is a real asset in attracting enterprise customers. It is much easier for them to move existing applications to the cloud if they don’t have to rewrite them to natively use object storage in the cloud.
Read more about cloud storage
- A single environment across on-premise and cloud environments is possible with a new class of product that builds file systems and object stores with hybrid cloud.
- Public cloud is growing as a proportion of IT spend at the same time as storage platforms that can span private and public cloud environments are emerging. Hybrid cloud has never looked a better prospect.
For Elastifile, its arrival on Google cloud is the first step in making its file system available more widely. According to Elastifile’s marketing director, Jerome McFarland, the company next plans to offer the service through Amazon Web Services (AWS).
But for now, McFarland said, Elastifile customers can deploy the company’s technology on compute instances on AWS and Azure but will have to wait for automated options similar to that launched on Google Cloud Launcher.
