DC Blok Has Deployed SwiftStack

SwiftStack, Inc., in multi-cloud storage and management, announced that DC BLOX, Inc., a multi-tenant data center provider in the Southeastern US, has deployed SwiftStack software to power its own multi-region, hyper-scale cloud storage service for its customers’ BC and DR requirements.

DC BLOX builds and manages secure, reliable data center facilities in traditionally underserved markets for clients such as enterprise, government and education, MSPs, healthcare, life sciences and content providers. It offers affordable business-class colocation and cloud storage services, with a private network across the Southeast to ensure BC and to support hybrid IT environments without a large up-front capital spend.

To meet the growing demand for affordable secondary storage services and expand to more regions, DC BLOX required a new storage platform that could perform, scale, leverage many geographic regions, give its end users the ability to specify where the data should be located, and support both traditional and cloud-native applications.

After evaluating several object and file storage options, the company selected SwiftStack to provide a platform for its DC BLOX cloud storage. With SwiftStack, DC BLOX created a multi-region cluster that currently spans three locations, with one under construction – and 15 more to come.

DC BLOX had already invested a great deal in its existing storage hardware, and appreciated that SwiftStack could repurpose and utilize that existing infrastructure, which kept their costs contained. It began with 8PB of raw capacity and as they scale, they can add standard, off-the-shelf hardware and ensure costs are always optimized. It was able to integrate additional provisioning, user management, and security capabilities for its needs.

“SwiftStack helped us reduce the cost of storing and utilizing data, based on a comparison with other choices we considered, including the ability to manage more data with a smaller head count,” said Chris Gatch, CTO, DC BLOX. “Along with savings at scale we are able to offer innovative data services for a more compelling, more competitive solution.“

Another priority was to give customers confidence in the durability and availability of their data. SwiftStack’s multi-region capability allows for data to be stored in and accessed from any data center, for flexible ways to use cloud and hybrid cloud workflows, while operators and end users have full control over where the data is placed. For example, one application’s data can be stored in Atlanta, while another application can have its data exclusively stored in Huntsville and Birmingham. This helps meet availability and data protection scenarios.

With SwiftStack’s 1space, organizations with private SwiftStack clusters can use DC BLOX as an alternative to AWS and other large public clouds, can connect directly to public cloud storage at lower cost, and avoid hard-to-estimate data egress fees.

“DC BLOX offers a cloud solution that addresses the needs of the business communities they serve, and also has unique differentiators to let them compete with global public cloud providers,” said Erik Pounds, VP marketing, SwiftStack. “Giving its customers both object and file access to data ensures cloud storage is compatible with their users’ modern and legacy applications, which is a fairly unique feature compared to what is available from big cloud vendors.“

Case study DC BLOX