Storage Solution for Digital Content

Parascale Announces Industry's First Software-Only Storage Solution for Digital Content

"Virtual Storage Network" Targets Petabyte-Scale File Storage; Deploys on Industry-Standard Linux Servers from Dell, HP, or IBM

CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 26 - Parascale today announced the industry's first software-only storage solution to address the unique needs created by digital content including video, images, and audio. Known as the Parascale Virtual Storage Network (VSN) software, it aggregates disks across commodity Linux x86 servers to deliver petabyte-scale file storage. With features such as automated, transparent file replication and file migration, Parascale eliminates storage hotspots and delivers massive read/write bandwidth. Since Parascale makes it practical for a single administrator to manage hundreds of terabytes of data, companies can retain data on-line that was previously relegated to offline storage or not retained at all. The Parascale software is licensed by annual subscription and priced per disk drive.


"The Google File System (GFS) and the Parascale Virtual Storage Network (VSN) employ similar architectures," explained Robin Harris of StorageMojo. "VSN, like GFS, builds availability and scalability around low-cost servers and disks. NAS appliances rely on costly low-volume boxes that are closed and don't scale. GFS has been deployed in production clusters of over 5,000 servers, proving the scalability of the architecture." Harris continued, "Fast, reliable, low-cost and massively scalable storage powers the growth of new applications like Web 2.0, video-on-demand, and hi-resolution image archiving. Parascale is the first of a new generation of software-only storage solutions."


International Data Corporation (IDC) reports that digital content is the fastest growing storage segment with volumes doubling annually. "The dramatic growth in use of video, image, and business analytic applications, coupled with regulatory mandates for information retention are changing the storage landscape, as enterprises seek to monetize their information assets," said Richard Villars, vice president of Storage Systems research at IDC. "Along with the emergence of new companies that want to establish gigantic 'content depots' for collecting, storing, and organizing rich content for consumers and businesses, this trend is driving a need for storage solutions like Parascale's that provide both the scalability and flexibility to meet to meet exploding information storage and access needs."


Stanford University, one of several Parascale beta sites, manages ultra- high resolution images accumulated using novel high-throughput genome sequencing equipment. "We are working to make it practical to record each person's individual genome, enabling personalized medicine," shared Mostafa Ronaghi, principal investigator at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. "The images we use to map genomes are both very large and extremely valuable, so we need on-line storage that is both scalable and reliable, yet inexpensive enough to permit broad application of the technology. Parascale gives us large-scale, reliable storage on inexpensive, commodity servers." He continued, "Our repositories grow progressively over time and we need to be able to incrementally expand our storage capacity. With Parascale, we can provision new hardware on a just-in-time basis to take advantage of the advances by server and disk drive manufacturers."


Parascale Virtual Storage Network


The Parascale Virtual Storage Network aggregates the disk storage on commodity Linux servers to provide one or more virtual file systems. The Parascale software configures one Control Node with as many as several hundred Storage Nodes, where each Node is a server. Because the Control Node only directs traffic, all data move directly between client applications and the Storage Nodes, allowing massive read/write bandwidth. Because the x86 servers need only be certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, they are available from a wide variety of OEMs, including HP, IBM, and Dell. Because client applications access the VSN via NFS, HTTP, and FTP; no custom client-side software is required, simplifying deployment and maintenance.


The Parascale software provides three unique capabilities for data mobility among servers, all transparent to users of the VSN. First, automatic file replication copies files across servers for data availability in the case of disk or server failure and for performance in the case of heavy read load. Second, automatic file migration distributes files across multiple servers, eliminating server hotspots and improving server utilization. Third, load balancing distributes file requests across all the servers that have a copy of the requested file, reducing the load on any one server to maximize system throughput.


The Parascale Virtual Storage Network is licensed by annual subscription. The software is priced per disk drive (or "spindle"); allowing customers to benefit directly from advances in disk drive capacity. Because Parascale does not depend on RAID, customers can replace failed drives with new units at the current price/performance sweet-spot, without any change in software license fees.


Parascale software is currently in beta testing. General availability is scheduled for November 2007.


More About Parascale Inc.


Founded in 2004 by industry veteran Cameron Bahar, Parascale is headquartered in Silicon Valley. The company's primary markets are media & entertainment, oil & gas, and science & military. Members of Parascale's founding engineering team have successfully delivered distributed operating systems and distributed file systems for companies including Sun (Sun Cluster), HP (Open SSI), Teradata (Teradata RDBMS), and IBM (AIX TCF). Parascale is financed by a syndicate, led by the Oskuoy Group that includes seed-round investors in Google and PayPal. For more information, contact Parascale, Inc. at 3 Results Way, Cupertino, Calif., 95014; phone (408) 716-7010; fax (408) 716-7011 or visit www.parascale.com. (PRN)