Scality announces release of Scality RING 4.2

Scality has announced the immediate release of Scality RING 4.2. Release 4.2 expands support for universal data access with the introduction of new file sharing protocols including NFS and CIFS.

Beyond seamless access to these standard file systems, Release 4.2 extends the RING’s data protection capabilities to NFS and CIFS thanks to Scality’s GeoSync, which provides file-level synchronization between data centers.

NFS, CIFS and AFP Expand Scality’s Open Cloud Access Support for Industry Standard File Systems
Release 4.2 expands Scality’s Open Cloud Access initiative with the inclusion of native NFS version 3, CIFS with Samba 3.5 support, AppleTalk Filing Protocol (AFP) based on Netatalk 3.x and open source or commercial FTP. Unlike other object storage products, which can only be accessed through REST API or, only support file protocols with ad-hoc gateways, the release of RING 4.2 demonstrates Scality’s commitment to native interoperability with the most widely adopted industry-standard file systems. Furthermore, using RING Release 4.2, a file can be stored by an application using NFS, and read by another application using a REST API.

“Our Open Cloud Access strategy, first announced in September 2012, seeks to offer universal, ubiquitous and unified access to data stored in the RING—a single means of providing native local and remote and file and object data access. Today Scality supports REST/HTTP protocols such as Amazon’s S3 API, CDMI, NFS, CIFS, AFP and FTP as well as FUSE. All data written through the REST API or file interface can be read through any of the other interfaces, and can be analyzed in place using Hadoop framework. In addition, Scality RING supports block storage for OpenStack via Cinder. Release 4.2 offers customers the broadest range of native information access available from any object storage provider,” said Jérôme Lecat, CEO of Scality.

GeoSync Data Protection Extended to NFS and Other File Systems
In addition to expanded support for standard file access protocols, RING Release 4.2 brings a data copy facility. GeoSync supports synchronous and asynchronous block-level and file-level replication across datacenters. Now files can enjoy the same level of data protection as object-based data.
“Thanks to GeoSync, Scality can replicate object, file system and block environments across data centers. This brings the cost and data protection efficiency of object storage to traditional applications which cannot be easily transformed to handle a REST API. RING 4.2 is the most comprehensive solution to store and protect petabyte-scale data on a global scale. It enables traditional datacenters to benefit from object storage right now, while having a path towards a software defined datacenter architecture,” said Philippe Nicolas, Director of Product Strategy at Scality.