Avere CloudFusion: File Storage Application for AWS

Avere Systems, Inc. introduced CloudFusion, a file storage application for Amazon Web Services (AWS), and its availability in the AWS Marketplace.

This responsive and cost-effective solution provides a purpose-built cloud file system that makes it easy for customers to leverage the performance features of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Elastic Block Store (EBS) with the cost efficiencies of Simple Storage Service (S3), all with the simplicity of network-attached storage (NAS).

Last year, the company announced the availability of its virtual NAS solution, with software-only virtual FXT (vFXT) Edge filers that work in conjunction with cloud-based and on-premises storage to deliver low latency and high performance levels for big data processing and storage in the cloud. CloudFusion is based on the same technology and brings similar capabilities to smaller data sets that use the AWS Cloud.

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Based on data access patterns and internal caching algorithms, CloudFusion automatically places the ‘hottest,’ most frequently used data, on Amazon EC2 RAM, while ‘warm’ data is placed on an EBS General Purpose SSD volume for high responsiveness to EC2. Finally, inactive ‘cold’ data is placed on S3 for the lowest cost and best data protection.

“We are excited to be bringing the benefits of Avere’s NAS technology to an entirely new set of AWS customers with our CloudFusion product,” said Ron Bianchini, CEO and president, Avere. “Enabling customers to run standard NAS applications on Amazon EC2, while storing the bulk of their data on Amazon S3 provides the optimal cost and performance for a variety of applications.“

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“As cloud adoption accelerates, customers are looking for ways to use and store their data more efficiently,” said Hal Bennett, GM, global technology partners, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “With Avere’s CloudFusion on the AWS Marketplace, AWS customers can further leverage AWS products and services to benefit from the increased flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the cloud.”

CloudFusion delivers a NAS feature set including snapshots to protect data against accidental deletion and corruption, encryption to secure data against unauthorized access, compression to make the most efficient use of storage capacity and a simple-to-use web GUI that makes setup and administration easy and provides visibility into the file serving operations of CloudFusion.

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CloudFusion is available on the AWS Marketplace. End-user software pricing starts at $0.99/hour for AWS r3.xlarge instances. A 21-day free trial is available (AWS usage fees may apply). CloudFusion is used in conjunction with EC2, EBS, and S3, which are separately billed at AWS current rates.