Caringo, the object storage software folks, has announced the seamless integration of their CAStor core technology as an enterprise-ready object store for Apache CloudStack 4.0, the OpenStack-competitive project now in incubation with the Apache Software Foundation.

The integration means CAStor can provide secure multi-tenant storage that scales from terabytes to petabytes with a robust customizable level of some nines data durability without backup or RAID.

The integration has been submitted to Apache as part of the CloudStack 4.0 release and is available for immediate download.

Citrix' CloudPlatform, powered by CloudStack, provides an open source platform for highly scalable and reliable cloud computing environments and is supposed to be deployed in some of the world's largest enterprises. The addition of Caringo object storage should enable these organizations to benefit from:

• Data durability without backups and RAID through Elastic Content protection that can set the level of 9s per object and optimize for access or footprint.
• More than simple storage, providing customizable metadata, WORM and auditable per-file authenticity enabling granular control and compliance use cases.
• Rapid performance regardless of file size, number of files or capacity enabled by CAStor's symmetric architecture field-hardened over the last six years and in use by over 500 customers.
• Content portability through CAStor's non-hash-based ID, which stores metadata with content for true content mobility with the ability to evolve server and storage hardware for decades to come, while maintaining the integrity of information.

"When architecting a complete cloud solution, object storage is critical," Citrix VP of products Kevin Kluge said. "Object storage combines elements of web-serving and traditional storage in a highly scalable solution that can quickly recover from any failure, making it ideal as the main storage target for unstructured data stored by Apache CloudStack. We are pleased that Caringo has submitted its CloudStack integration to the Apache Software Foundation as it gives all Apache CloudStack users open access to one of the most robust and scalable object storage engines on the market."

The combined solution provides a complete cloud service, including compute and storage, secure in a user's data center for private use or as a public service. The use of CAStor as a main content store includes servicing with no downtime and zero provisioning for real-time expansion and 7x24 operations making ‘just-in-time' delivery of Storage-as-a-Service possible while maintaining high performance and quality of service.

"Content storage results in the largest data center footprint in any cloud service which is why administrators need to think about how they'll refresh their hardware over time in addition to scalability," Caringo CEO Mark Goros said. "What our software does is decouple content from hardware, solving scale and hardware obsolescence issues while providing the ability to optimize storage infrastructure for footprint or access based on the required level of 9s data durability. We're pleased to bring our software to CloudStack users and are committed to continuing to fulfill our mutual customers' most pressing storage needs."

Available now with a free fully featured 12TB license the integration is available for download from the Apache Software Foundation under an ASL license.

For a limited time Caringo is offering a free full-featured 12TB CAStor license.