US Signal, a Midwest-based IT solutions provider, has announced the addition of object storage to its portfolio of cloud storage solutions. The new service would provide a “cost-effective” method for storing large quantities of non-transactional or unstructured data.
Instead of organizing data into files or blocks as is the case with traditional storage systems, object storage uses variable-sized data containers known as objects. Each object consists of data; a unique object identifier; and metadata comprised of customizable attributes that users can use to tag objects. There is no folder structure. US Signal has added the new storage offering because the number of object IDs can be increased for almost limitless scalability, so it doesn’t have the limitations posed by folders.
The new object storage offering would make it ideal for uses cases such as long-term file retention of archive data or backup datasets. It can also be used in conjunction with US Signal’s file and block storage options to create a multi-tiered storage strategy.
Storage API
Users can connect to US Signal’s SLA-backed object storage from anywhere, anytime, and with any device or application that supports S3 or Swift API calls. Storage API calls are made to “highly available” public API gateways, which parse data into smaller fragments that are encoded and stored on multiple backend cluster resources for redundancy.
US Signal does not charge for API operations or egress bandwidth charges. Customers are only charged for a committed capacity amount, which includes all API transaction fees and any ingress/egress bandwidth consumption.
With over 14,000 miles of lit fiber and metro rings in strategic markets, US Signal offers one of the Midwest’s largest, fully deployed networks.
