Microsoft Enters Agreement to Purchase Avere Systems

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it had entered into an agreement to purchase Avere Systems, a maker of software and hardware appliances that can perform filesystem virtualization, file-to-object gateway services, and allow customers to easily connect their onsite storage to public cloud storage.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been a big fan of the Avere platform. In my reseller days, I was involved in a few deals on solutions and designs involving Avere filers.

If you’re not familiar with Avere, you can read these quick overviews of their cloud gateway capabilities, their virtual filer, and their complete onsite storage solution.

Avere Systems customers include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Hopkins University, and Sony Corporation’s entertainment division. (I’m fairly familiar with how two of those three customers are employing their Avere filers.)

If I were to sum up what the Avere filers provide for customers, it would be that they provide the performance of local (onsite) storage for data that’s stored remotely (offsite). Clients access the Avere systems front-end using either the NFS or SMB protocols. The back-end can connect to multiple storage sources using either NFS, SMB, S3, or some combination. The Avere filers present clients with a single global namespace, meaning the client has no knowledge of where the data’s source actually is. Data can be migrated between sources on the Avere’s back-end with no interruption of service to clients connecting to the front-end.

With the virtual filers, Avere can also allow offsite compute clients in the cloud to access data in a customer’s private onsite data center…

In all, it’s not difficult to see why Microsoft might want to acquire them — especially since they’ve announced their intent to move it into their Azure division. What’s surprising, really, is that no other cloud provider saw Avere as an acquisition target earlier.

If Microsoft is able to incorporate that ability to have cloud computing resources accessing data from private onsite data centers into Azure, it will be a big differentiator for them as no other cloud providers currently offer a similar capability.

At this time, there’s been no news regarding the purchase price. Estimates and specualtion range from $300 Million to $500 Million. If true, compared to the potential Avere’s intellectual property has to add to a cloud service provider, this could turn out to have been quite the bargain for Microsoft.

Today, Avere Systems supports Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. Obviously we should expect closer integration with Azure in the future, but Microsoft says they’ll continue to support AWS and Google, which I’m sure is welcome news to existing Avere Customers.

Resources

 

Avere Systems Announces New Complete Storage Solution

avere-c2nToday, Avere Systems announced its first complete storage solution. Avere is known for their Edge Filers that virtualize NAS systems and/or act as a file-access gateway to object storage.

The just-announced C2N solution combines Avere FXT Edge Filers with Avere’s own new scale-out object storage platform. This combination allows the C2N to be used as a standalone storage solution, while still using the FXT as to virtualize other NAS devices and as a gateway to other object storage platforms — either on- or off-premises. I’ll walk through the solution below. Continue reading

Avere Announces Software Updates, Adds Virtual FXT Filer

Today Avere Systems announced an update to the AOS software (version 4.5) that runs on their FXT Edge Filers. The big news in this version is the addition of a Virtual Edge Filer, the vFXT.

Avere’s FXT works by placing an Edge Filer close to the end-user clients. The Edge Filer uses a global name space to virtualize file storage for the Core Filers positioned behind it. AOS 4.0 included support for using public cloud storage as a Core Filer, or Cloud NAS. AOS 4.5 adds support for installing an Edge Filer in the cloud, further extending the functionality. Continue reading

Investors Demonstrate Faith in Avere Systems’ Cloud NAS Offerings

Today Avere Systems announced a renewed emphasis on their Cloud NAS gateway offering. The Cloud NAS allows access to public cloud storage resources at performance similar to on-premises storage, making it a hybrid cloud storage enabler.

Personally, I’ve always liked this product. When you dig into the details it’s easy to see why. In March, Avere posted SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 testing results putting the product through its paces. Using three FXT 3800 models providing access to Amazon S3 storage, Avere was able to demonstrate SPEC Ops in excess of 180K ops/sec with just over 2ms response time. (You can read the full test details here.)

Apparently, I’m not the only one who likes the product. Avere also announced that they’ve received an additional $20Million from investors in a Series D round of funding. This brings to total amount invested in Avere Systems up to $72Million.

Hybrid Cloud is here. The fight for market share in the Hybrid Cloud space is beginning in earnest. I fully expect Avere to be a significant player in this space.

Avere Announces Cloud NAS Product

Today, at the Amazon AWS re:Invent show, Avere Systems announced new capabilities for their FXT Edge Filer. The new offering, Cloud NAS, offers support for both Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Glacier. Support for other services is coming. In addition to adding optimization for Cloud storage, the new Cloud NAS also adds object storage optimization.

To my knowledge, this is the first product offering that optimizes the performance of Cloud storage. To explain how it works, I’ll need to give a little background on the Avere Systems FXT Series Filers. Continue reading