Instant storage cloud: just add Atmos

DIY self-service approach

By Chris Mellor, 14th December 2010

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EMC has added a self-service capability to Atmos so that service providers can add a cloud storage offering to their services – because they don't have to write their own user-metering modules.

EMC says that its Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform (ACDP) has end-user identity provisioning along with reporting on bandwidth and storage resource consumption – the metering module – which delivers reporting by tenants and enables chargeback for private clouds and and billing for public clouds. Service providers and businesses can use their existing customer or user-facing portals and hook these up to the ACDP or use a portal that's included in the ACDP.

The idea is that service providers can buy Atmos storage hardware and the ACDP and start offering cloud storage services to their customers in a matter of days instead of weeks or months. EMC says they could offer archiving to the cloud, backup and shared storage services. Private cloud storage-as-a-service would be a trickier proposition, as business units don't generally want to pay for storage services from their head organisation's data centre on their own. There may be some instances of it happening though.

The Atmos hardware platform has been enhanced with better multi-tenancy services, according to EMC. It already offers multi-tenancy services via tenant and sub-tenant separation of data and administration and EMC is adding "network separation of tenants", saying it "improves security and operational efficiencies for service providers and enterprises supporting multiple applications, departments and customers in a single, shared cloud infrastructure."

EMC partner MTI will be offering on-premise and off-premise services for storage, archiving and tape cloning, based on the ACDP. Redstor will also use the platform to build out its cloud storage offering.

There is a set of new consulting services around the ACDP. The ACDP and the enhanced Atmos storage product are available worldwide now. ®

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