background

Our Next-Generation
Software Defined Archive Platform

Our [R]evolutionary new Software Defined Archive (SDA) platform is the
next-generation digital archive. It represents a major paradigm shift from the legacy archive solutions pervasive in the industry today and will change the way you think about your archive.

No longer is your archive a barrier to change, but rather a springboard to help propel your organization into the future.

Cloudfirst Software Defined ArchiveTM (SDA) Platform

Our [r]evolutionary new Software Defined Archive (SDA)TM platform is the next-generation digital archive. It represents a major paradigm shift from the legacy archive solutions and architectures pervasive in the industry today and will change the way you think about your archives now and into the future. No longer is your archive a barrier to change, but rather a springboard to help propel your organization into the future.

Our SDA platform is built around a modern and scalable distributed architecture, has cross-workflow applicability, limitless scale and native support for any type and amount of storage regardless of your vision today or tomorrow. We deploy on any COTS or virtualized platform and enable metadata-driven orchestration of your assets across any mix of on-premise, private cloud, public cloud or hybrid storage.

To help soften the budgetary impact of your next-generation digital archive transformation, we can reuse your existing legacy archive storage infrastructure. That means we can migrate off your existing tape and/or disk archive, out of your legacy archive software, into our next-generation SDA platform and back into your existing tape and/or disk infrastructure. We can also take this wonderful opportunity to migrate you to the latest-and-greatest tape and disk technology to ensure we can protect your assets now and into the future. Of course, during this migration (enabled by Rapid Migrate) we can also embrace the public cloud for any portion of your assets driven by simple metadata policies.

  • Image

Our SDA platform is offered on an annual subscription basis inclusive of 24x7 support, upgrades and all related professional services so there are no hidden costs. Better still, we do not license for capacity so you can grow without worrying about the financial impacts of your success! Our SDA platform is licensed based on the number of nodes you deploy which effectively equates to aggregate system throughput. We can start with a single, low-cost, non-redundant SDA platform to test the waters and dynamically scale to dozens of servers as your requirements increase. Our SDA platform can also run at multiple locations and in the public cloud providing a globally federated namespace across all SDA deployments bringing a fresh new simplicity to disaster recovery and business continuance.

We also add a new twist to hybrid as our SDA platform allows you to embrace all storage topologies including public cloud services in a pragmatic fashion while maintaining on-premise storage footprint(s). This allows you to support existing on-premise workflows while avoiding cloud egress fees and acts as a cloud "safety-net" for your most valuable assets. Our dynamic SLA engine allows you to make metadata-driven decisions on where particular assets are stored and how many copies are maintained at any point in time.

By enabling you to maintain your existing on-premise storage infrastructure, our SDA platform allows you to embrace the cloud in a pragmatic fashion by "peeling off" specific workflows and productions to the cloud. Your on-premise asset footprint allows you to elastically expand and contract your operations to and from the cloud dynamically based on the same metadata-driven policies core to the SDA platform. With our multi-cloud support for all leading public cloud providers, you can even direct specific assets to specific cloud providers based on cost, capabilities, production requirements and SLAs. Our SDA platform eases your transition to the cloud and mitigates risk while ensuring utmost control and protection of your valuable assets along the way.

Our SDA platform is already being used in dozens of high-performance industries such as Media and Entertainment, High Performance Computing (HPC) and Life-sciences where performance and scale requirements are massive.

background

Cloud [R]evolution™

Massive-scale digital repositories present challenges few can truly comprehend. As many organizations struggle to find the right balance of software, hardware and cloud-services to meet their go-forward objectives, many of the complex details are lost in the noise. Leveraging our extensive experience, we can help you navigate this complex path.

Software Defined Archive (SDA) Features

Our SDA platform exposes standard file-system endpoints (CIFS, NFS, S3) for integration to higher-level devices, control systems, client systems, editing platforms and orchestration solutions. Essentially, if you have a tool, device or system which can read and write to a standard file system or S3 endpoint, integration is trivial. Of course, if you want to enable additional capabilities of the system we also offer a Webservices interface.

The power of the SDA is in the virtual nature of the file-system endpoints we expose. Essentially, these endpoints are metadata queries into the SDA environment allowing fully dynamic integration with higher level workflows. For example, we can define a metadata query for a particular production unit, asset type, facial recognition tag, etc. and expose it as a SDA virtual filesystem (VFS) endpoint. Each matching asset stored on any abstracted storage device or cloud-service will be exposed via this VFS endpoint. Of course, these VFS endpoints transcend all of the asset types, storage technologies, topologies and geographical locations you are running the SDA platform providing a truly dynamic, cognitive and globally federated view of your most valuable file-based assets.

As a cloud-ready platform with support for all major vendors, you can simply enter your own keys at any point to scale your SDA platform storage orchestration to multi-cloud targets. Imagine being able to allow cognitive archive management leveraging business, asset and technical metadata to automate your storage. SDA storage lifecycle policies are simply metadata queries configured in the system and can include rich asset metadata such as facial recognition, sentiment, production groups, asset value/cost, season/episode, etc. to bring true cognitive intelligence to your archive management.

Any Type of Data

Our SDA platform handles any type, scale and format of data, regardless of where it comes from or where its going to. This helps unify data, across your local or global enterprise, regardless of your scale, environment, workflow or business requirements.

Metadata + Essence

By allowing systems to fundamentally encapsulate core metadata along with unstructured file-based content empowers operations simply not possible in the past. Our SDA allows you to use metadata to drive lifecycles, control access and define workflows.

Global Namespace

Our SDA platform provides a globally unified namespace across all devices, technologies, physical locations and cloud providers. Our SDA remains laser focused on where, when and how your data is stored while abstracting underlying complexities.

Any Technology

Whether you are considering NAS, Object-Storage, Data Tape, Private or Public Cloud-services or examining future technologies, our SDA platform ensures ubiquitous and transparent storage across any technology - today and into the future.

Infinite Scale

Our SDA was conceived of and developed in environments (HPC and others) where data-scale and performance demands have grown exponentially in recent years. Our SDA platform can manage any scale of storage, any number of files, objects and near infinite total capacities.

No Capacity Licensing

Our SaaS-based SDA subscription never charges for storage capacity! Subscriptions includes all related professional service, upgrades and support. Often times we can implement our SDA solution for around the same price as your legacy archive annual support contracts.

Highly Resilient

Our SDA platform is based on modern distributed architectures with engines that can be deployed anywhere on-premise, cloud or hybrid. This allows the platform to live and breathe in response to your needs by dynamically expanding, contracting and adapting now and into the future.

Open APIs

Our SDA unifies access across all deployments, technologies and geographies via open API access to all stored content. With a single global namespace, each connected system can also interact with all global assets via familiar and ubiquitous modern interfaces like S3, NFS and CIFS.

background

E: info@cloudfirst.io

Our team of seasoned experts can help you develop, plan and execute on your next-generation digital archive strategies. Our innovative services and best-of-breed solutions can revolutionize your asset storage, management, protection and preservation objectives.

Please contact us today to find out more.

All product names, logos, brands and trademarks are property of their respective owners.
© Cloudfirst Inc. 2021. All Rights Reserved.