Karmaloop.com Selects TwinStrata CloudArray and Amazon S3

TwinStrata, Inc. announced Karmaloop, a Boston-based online retailer of name brand underground fashion, selected CloudArray to provide an off-site extension to its data storage environment.

When Karmaloop CTO Joe Finsterwald came on board in October of 2010, he recognized that Karmaloop needed an disaster recovery capability for several terabytes of SQL databases, images, multimedia, financials, and documents. As such, he turned to NSK Inc to craft an off-site data protection strategy that would leverage his existing investment in Symantec Backup Exec Software with no increase to his administrative footprint. Together with NSK Inc, Karmaloop considered several options, among them purchasing additional tapes and larger tape drives, hiring a service to take the tapes off-site, and/or securing an additional storage area network (SAN) to provide disk-to-disk off-site data protection.

Karmaloop expressed a strong preference for a tape-free solution. In response, NSK Inc. recommended the deployment of CloudArray along with cloud storage, a combined solution that would cost less than half of a traditional approach involving the expansion of a disk-to-disk infrastructure off-site. NSK Inc installed and configured CloudArray, choosing Amazon S3 for the cloud storage provider. The combined solution worked seamlessly with Symantec Backup Exec 2010, was easy to install, and required zero redesign of the customer’s existing IT infrastructure.

"NSK introduced us to a game-changing technology with TwinStrata CloudArray," said Joe Finsterwald, CTO of Karmaloop. "While we were bracing for a significant increase in administrative and capital expense, we were pleasantly surprised to find an enterprise-class data protection solution that leveraged our existing infrastructure and resources and works amazingly well."

"TwinStrata CloudArray has greatly enhanced the portfolio of solutions we offer our customers looking to extend their storage infrastructure off-site," said Tim Lasonde, president of NSK Inc. "In fact, we use CloudArray internally, which only serves to enhance customer confidence and our credibility, never mind the tremendous cost efficiencies it offers."

"We continue to see strong adoption of cloud storage solutions with CloudArray and are very pleased NSK and Karmaloop have chosen our solution," said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of TwinStrata. "Our growing list of satisfied customers is a testament to the simplicity, security and savings we enable for business customers looking to extend their data storage off-site."