In this installment of our road to release series, I’m really proud to be able to unveil the next two features. We want the Filer to simply “work” for different virtualization platforms and we want customers to be able to choose from a range of cloud storage providers. It’s important that we support as many of these as we can, while still ensuring their quality.
Since day one, customers have requested support for Microsoft’s Hyper-V server/hypervisor. Hyper-V has been steadily gaining ground since Microsoft released it. It has been deployed to many Microsoft technology focused shops, many of which are potential Nasuni customers.
In the update coming this fall, Microsoft Hyper-V will be a fully supported virtualization platform for the Nasuni Filer. It works just like it would in our currently supported virtualization platforms. Here it is booting, and then running in the background:
Everything, as our users should expect, just works. When the release is ready, we will post Hyper-V specific images for you to download alongside our current offerings.
In addition to the newly minted Hyper-V support, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time testing our new Windows Azure Platform support. We’ve found that the functionality, performance and quality of the Azure platform is easily on par with the rest of our supported cloud storage providers.
Starting with the next release, users will be able to select Windows Azure during the first-boot wizard (install phase). They will also be able to create new volumes using either Nasuni-provided credentials or their own private credentials on Windows Azure:
And here is the wizard view. We’ve made a lot of improvements here since 1.0:
We will be supporting the three “Anywhere” regions (US, Asia and Europe) for Azure volumes initially. Support for other regions will come in later releases, as customers request it.
With these two exciting announcements, I’m wrapping up this series on the upcoming features. I have to admit to a certain amount of pride. It’s been fun to cast a spotlight on all the changes we’re releasing in such a short amount of time. All of the employees here at Nasuni work tirelessly on behalf of the company and our users, and it has been great showing all of you what we’ve been doing behind the scenes. Note, though, that there’s a lot more to this new release than the features I’ve covered. We’ve improved performance, scalability and a hundred other things along the way, and all of these changes will directly benefit our users.
So, in closing, thanks to all of you who have provided us with valuable feedback, bug reports and suggestions. Everything you tell us is discussed internally amongst people in development, sales and support. Remember, if you have feedback or questions, please email us – feedback@nasuni.com - or sound off in the comments in any of our blog posts.
If you’re excited about these features – why wait to start using the Filer? Sign up today you’ll get immediate access to all of the features discussed in this series the second we release. Sign up today and use the coupon code “Summer 2010” when subscribing, and you’ll get 10% seasonal discount off the subscription price!
Other posts in this series: