We’ve just announced our expansion into Germany, and specifically the availability of our Enterprise-grade Virtual Private Storage Array service (VPSA) at AWS Frankfurt. Adding new sites has become routine (AWS Frankfurt is our 32nd public Point of Presence worldwide) and I wanted to expand a bit on why this is a particularly big deal, and on the benefits this new site confers to customers requiring SAN & NAS capabilities in the cloud.
The choice of an additional location within the European Union: The European Union as a whole is the world’s largest economy, and yet until recently, we’ve only had one location there – in Dublin, Ireland. We’ve already announced the addition of Amsterdam (at Azure and Dimension Data) and London (at Dimension Data), and this marks a further expansion of our footprint with the EU. European companies now have far more options when considering Zadara’s block (iSCSI) and file (NFS, CIFS) storage, and/or replication between Zadara’s cloud- and on-premises storage offerings (for more on replication, read on).
The choice of a location within Germany: While most European companies are required to store their data within the boundaries of the EU, some German companies either prefer or are required to store their data within the Federal Republic of Germany. Until now, this meant that these customers avoided using AWS as customers have no control where their data resides. The addition of our services at Frankfurt for the first time addresses this requirement ensuring customers with dedicated resources for complete control over data (as well as performance and security).
The ability to automatically replicate data between AWS Frankfurt and AWS Dublin: Disaster recovery (DR) has become mandatory for businesses large and small. DR typically requires replicating data to a secondary site that is so far from the primary that the odds of a disaster affecting both sites simultaneously is infinitesimally small. A good rule of thumb for such minimum separation is 1,000 km and, as it happens, the Dublin-to-Frankfurt range exceeds this minimum by a hair (±1086 km). With VPSA advanced data management services (including instant snapshots and remote replication), using DR is a simple and seamless click away.
Location with geographical proximity to many Central European cities: The addition of the Frankfurt is not just a boon to German firms. Within a reasonable network distance you will find other major European business hubs, including Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and Zurich. Companies located there may have found AWS’ original European location in Dublin to be too distant for the latency demands of their business applications. We’re thrilled to enable more customers access to robust file and block storage in the cloud.
This is why we are excited about this launch and expect our Frankfurt site to grow to be one of our largest.
Have you been waiting for VPSA availability in Frankfurt? Go ahead, give it a try, in Frankfurt or at any of our 31 other locations worldwide. Our free trial is commitment-free: bit.ly/registerVPSA
