Most companies have a common need for a cost-effective, scalable media storage solution that allows them to efficiently store and serve large numbers of documents to numerous users simultaneously. In most cases, as data ages it becomes less active. Whether data is corporate information or media content, it is important that this data be kept available, but at a cost relative to its value. This problem is aggravated by the hot / cold data problem. As file servers are added to the environment, new data is stored on these servers. Consequently, all the writing and most of the reading occurs on the drives in these servers. This irregularity limits read/write bandwidth as the older file servers remain largely idle, while the new file servers get saturated.

Another challenge is the increased growth of data - both in terms of number of files and their density. In every industry it is becoming important to keep source data for future use. Take Genomic data for example, each year better algorithms are introduced and older data has new value. However, many research organizations have lacked the simple and scalable content storage solution required to store the massive source files.

ParaScale’s economics and scale capabilities are designed to address Tier-2 NAS and content depot challenges. Data can be copied to the content storage cloud to free up more expensive Tier-1 storage devices and delay costly infrastructure upgrades. The ParaScale cloud can be expanded on demand using commodity storage and a few simple mouse clicks. ParaScale supports standard network protocols like NFS, HTTP, FTP and WebDav, and appears as a NAS device to applications or users connecting to the cloud. There are no application language or logic changes when integrating a ParaScale private cloud into the datacenter. This, combined with a cost effective and massively scalable file services architecture, opens up many opportunities for Tier-2 NAS applications. ParaScale also removes the long-term management headaches associated with data migrations or hardware failures making it ideal for archival storage. Data is automatically capacity balanced and hardware changes are transparent to users. A ParaScale private cloud is cost effective as it can be scaled as you grow, enabling servers and disk to be acquired from commodity storage vendors at the latest capacities and prices.