Originally announced August 22, 2019. Source: GlobeNewswire / Cloudian press release.
Overview
Cloudian announced general availability of its fully native S3-compatible object storage solution for VMware Cloud Providers in August 2019. The solution integrates directly with VMware vCloud Director — a core component of the VMware Cloud Provider Platform — allowing service providers to manage object storage from a single control plane and automate storage workflows without leaving the vCloud Director interface.
The integration targets VMware Cloud Providers who want to offer revenue-generating, managed storage services to their customers without building a separate storage management stack. By combining Cloudian’s HyperStore object storage with vCloud Director’s orchestration capabilities, providers gain a foundation for launching multiple as-a-service offerings backed by S3-compatible APIs.
Key Highlights
- Limitlessly scalable, native S3-compatible storage managed from VMware vCloud Director
- Partnership with Veeam enables S3-compatible data protection services within vCloud Director environments
- Cloudian achieved Veeam Ready – Object designation through the Veeam Ready Program, indicating the highest qualification tier for object storage products
- Cloudian CMO Jon Toor participated in a VMworld 2019 industry panel alongside VMware executives and joint customer phoenixNAP
Supported As-a-Service Offerings
VMware Cloud Providers can use the Cloudian integration to build and deliver the following categories of managed services:
- Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) — tenant-isolated, scalable object storage billed on consumption
- Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) — S3-compatible backup targets for VM and application data
- Archive-as-a-Service (AaaS) — low-cost long-term data retention using object storage tiers
- Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) — replication and recovery workflows anchored to S3-compatible endpoints
- Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) — S3-compatible data lakes accessible to analytics toolchains
Deployment Flexibility
Cloudian can be deployed either as a hardware appliance or as software-defined storage running on commodity hardware anywhere in the provider’s infrastructure. In both deployment modes, vCloud Director manages the storage resources centrally and provides native workflow automation, removing the need for providers to operate a separate management interface for their object storage tier.
Out-of-the-box features included with the solution are designed specifically for multi-tenant service provider environments:
- Multi-tenant resource pooling — isolate storage capacity per tenant or customer account
- Integrated billing — track and report consumption per tenant for chargeback or showback
- Quality of Service (QoS) controls — set IOPS and throughput limits per tenant to prevent noisy-neighbor issues
- Exabyte-scale modular scalability — add capacity nodes incrementally without service disruption
Cloud-Ready Data Protection: Cloudian and Veeam Integration
A central use case for this release is enabling VMware Cloud Providers to deliver data protection services using a combined Cloudian and Veeam stack, fully orchestrated through vCloud Director.
How it works: Veeam Backup & Replication uses vCloud Director APIs to back up vApps and virtual machines and restore them directly into the vCloud Director hierarchy. Cloudian serves as the S3-compatible object storage target for Veeam Cloud Tier, providing unlimited long-term retention capacity at object storage economics. Providers can deploy both Cloudian and Veeam directly through vCloud Director, keeping the entire workflow inside a single management plane.
Cloudian achieved Veeam Ready – Object status through the Veeam Ready Program. This qualification and testing program validates that storage products meet Veeam’s interoperability and performance standards, and the “Ready – Object” designation represents the highest tier of qualification for object storage solutions in the program.
Industry Quotes
“With Veeam Backup & Replication, service providers can now offer their customers S3-compatible data protection services compatible with Cloudian and VMware vCloud Director, easily migrating and protecting their VMware workloads, all with the same proven Veeam solutions they already use today.”
— Ken Ringdahl, Vice President Global Alliances Architecture, Veeam
“One of our continuing priorities is creating new revenue opportunities for VMware Cloud Providers by enabling high-value solutions. Ecosystem partners play a key role in this endeavor, and we look forward to working with Cloudian and Veeam to offer these Cloud Providers an enhanced platform for serving their customers’ data protection needs.”
— Ajay Patel, Senior Vice President of Product Development, Cloud Services, VMware
Why This Matters for VMware Cloud Providers
For service providers running on the VMware Cloud Provider Platform, a native S3-compatible object storage tier addresses several practical gaps:
- S3 ecosystem compatibility — thousands of applications natively support the S3 API. Offering an S3-compatible endpoint means providers can immediately serve customers using tools like Veeam, Veritas, Commvault, Splunk, and most major data platforms without custom integration work.
- Margin improvement — object storage is significantly cheaper per gigabyte than block storage. Moving backup, archive, and bulk data workloads to object storage lowers provider infrastructure costs while maintaining competitive pricing.
- Reduced management overhead — centralized management inside vCloud Director reduces the operational complexity of running separate storage platforms with separate tooling.
- Multi-tenancy at scale — built-in tenant isolation, billing, and QoS controls mean providers can onboard new customers and storage workloads without significant per-tenant configuration effort.
About Cloudian HyperStore
Cloudian’s flagship product, HyperStore, is an S3-compatible object storage platform designed for on-premises and hybrid deployments. It provides a global data fabric architecture that allows enterprises and service providers to store, search, and protect object and file data across multiple sites — both on-premises and in public clouds — within a single unified namespace. Cloudian positions HyperStore as a drop-in S3-compatible alternative to public cloud object storage for organizations that need data sovereignty, low-latency local access, or predictable cost structures.