Cloud Storage Channel Feature

SpiderOak Debuts Cloud Storage Alternative to Amazon S3 Service

By Nathesh
TMCnet Contributor

SpiderOak claimed that its newly unveiled Nimbus.io, a horizontally scalable open source software for large data storage, is a low-cost alternative to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service.

By making use of parity instead of replication to achieve highly redundant storage with less overhead, the Nimbus.io software differentiates itself from other distributed storage systems. It caters to users’ demand for low-cost, off-the-shelf solution for reliable long-term archival data storage and enables developers to make use of bulk storage within their applications at greatly reduced cost.

Some of the notable features of Nimbus.io are: REST API similar to Amazon S3; 100 percent open source hardware, client libraries and server software; built by SpiderOak on the same proven backend storage network which powers hundreds of thousands of backups; focuses on high throughput and reliability, while sacrificing low latency for cost effectiveness; and more.

Officials with the company noted that Nimbus.io is a fresh design based on what they have learned operating the SpiderOak archival storage service since 2007. Its free and open source backend software and hardware enable developers to either purchase storage from SpiderOak or run their own storage clusters locally for a fraction of the price of similar services.

They added that the source code and detailed documentation including developer’s guide, administrator’s guide, internals and glossary is available to developers wishing to participate in the project.

SpiderOak explained that the Nimbus.io server side software is released under the ?GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPL) and client libraries, benchmark, and testing code are released under the ?GNU Lesser General Public License. The company expects the commercial service to go live during the first quarter of 2012 and the current version is available only by invitation.