Hybrid cloud storage vendor Panzura has added more data management capabilities to its flagship CloudFS platform.
CloudFS 8.4, available today, now offers role-based access control (RBAC) with Microsoft Entra, support for more AWS S3 storage classes and the ability to run the platform on IBM's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) KVMs.
Many of these updates help the platform catch up with other challengers in the cloud storage filer space like Nasuni and Ctera, said Mary Jander, an analyst at Futuriom. Those competitors have pivoted into other offerings like data management or generative AI agents, respectively.
"They're a little bit behind the curve," Jander said. "They've got interesting [tech] with their Moonwalk acquisition, but that's not fully integrated with their flagship product."
New updates
The CloudFS platform had some permission controls for users and actions in the past, but the new RBAC capability offers more holistic identity security with the integration of Entra, formerly known as Azure Active Directory, according to Sundar Kanthadai, CTO at Panzura.
Connecting to Entra enables customizable user or administrator roles to limit permissions within CloudFS around platform actions and data privacy, Kanthadai said. Future updates to RBAC will support the Okta identity management platform, he added.
Customers running RHEL version 9.4 or above can now run the CloudFS software within a KVM, a Kernel-based Virtual Machine running in Linux. The platform already supports Broadcom's VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization platforms, Kanthadai said, but customers have been asking for virtualization alternatives in the wake of market shake-ups.
The CloudFS 8.4 update also introduces the option to use AWS S3 Intelligent-Tiering for cloud storage, a storage tier offered by AWS that automatically moves less accessed data to colder and often cheaper tiers.
CloudFS only supported the S3 Standard storage class before, and customers would manually adjust tiering or lifecycle policies within their AWS accounts, Kanthadai said. The support for Intelligent-Tiering enables CloudFS users to avoid AWS retrieval fees, for a different monthly cost, to keep data in colder tiers that the platform can cache for immediate access.
This addition provides a new value proposition to CloudFS, as cost savings are an advantage of a well-planned cloud storage environment, according to Mitch Lewis, an analyst at Futurum Group.
"One of the key values of global file systems is NAS-like functionality while leveraging cloud object storage economics," Lewis said.
2 pillars
Further CloudFS integration isn't what the company has in mind with Panzura Symphony, the vendor's new data management software released following its acquisition of Moonwalk, according to Kanthadai.
CloudFS and Symphony will evolve along separate tracks for the foreseeable future, he said. Symphony's primary advantage is vendor or platform neutrality, enabling the software to manage data from CloudFS as well as a variety of other storage software and hardware.
Fully integrating Moonwalk might make the Panzura platform more robust, but it's then limiting the functionality to Panzura CloudFS users.
Mitch LewisAnalyst, Futurum Group
"Think of it as the two pillars of the company," Kanthadai said. "Symphony will continue to evolve, but will always be vendor-neutral."
That separation has its advantages, Lewis said, since keeping the whatever enhancements come to CloudFS could weaken the Symphony offering or distract engineers from the storage focus of the platform. A vendor-neutral offering for data management also gives Panzura more inroads to customers over its competition, he said.
Panzura's direction for CloudFS and Symphony to evolve separately could give the vendor more data management opportunities to capitalize on, according to Lewis.
"Fully integrating Moonwalk might make the Panzura platform more robust, but it's then limiting the functionality to Panzura CloudFS users," he said.
Tim McCarthy is a news writer for TechTarget Editorial covering cloud and data storage.
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