The cloud storage provider Nirvanix’s demise, a little bit over a month ago, was a non-event despite initial panic. Why? No data loss.

When the scoop began to leak that Nirvanix was on the point of shut its doors, the industry went into full panic mode. There have been predictions of more failures and many “See, I told you so” comments from cloud naysayers. But 28 days later, i used to be at Amazon re:Invent, and no-one really cared.

What happened? Why has Nirvanix so quickly become just a road bump at the seemingly unstoppable cloud raceway?

First and doubtless most significantly, nobody i will find has lost data. Despite the gloom-and-doom predictions, it sort of feels as though everyone got their data out. I still think there’s legitimate concern over what happens to the copies of information still on Nirvanix hardware, however the undeniable fact that there were no reported incidents of knowledge loss is astounding.

Why did this happen? Simple, the industry as an entire responded quickly. It was essentially a disaster with no natural element consisting of a storm, fire, or flood. Some vendors responded because they smelled a business opportunity. Others responded because they’d clients using the Nirvanix cloud, they usually had some level of obligation to transport those clients off it. And perhaps a number of companies responded since it was the proper thing to do. But essentially, we had a disaster, the industry responded (for different reasons), and nobody got stuck with data in a cloud that have been shut down.

[ Need cloud tips? Read Best Use Cases For Cloud Storage. ]

We spoke to several gateway companies — which provided on-premises-to-cloud-storage translation appliances — that were ready to move data out of the Nirvanix cloud. For clients whose data sets were too big to repeat back to the on-premises appliance and to a different cloud, these gateway companies worked with other providers to tap directly into the Nirvanix datacenter and pull the info out. Most interestingly, these companies report that no client has given up on cloud storage. They all simply moved to other providers. In other words, the Nirvanix users remain sold at the cloud promise, and so they desire to continue using the cloud as an element in their solution.

Clearly, there are lessons to be learned from the Nirvanix shutdown. We do not desire to should go into full scramble mode the following time there’s a cloud failure. One of the vital positives from this event is that we now know that cloud storage is not really some mythical creation that’s proof against failure. This is a business and a datacenter, and it has weaknesses from which organizations ought to protect themselves.

Interest in cloud mirroring (either via an application or the gateway) is at the rise and give the last word protection from a cloud failure. Which is a pricey option, though. A more cost-effective option will be for cloud providers to contemplate tape as a backup. Imagine if Nirvanix had a duplicate of all its data on tape — it can have just shipped everyone their data. With LTO’s LTFS capability, we wouldn’t actually have needed to worry about what backup application they used.

But at long last, protecting yourself from a cloud failure is your responsibility because the IT professional. When you’ve got applications which might be entirely cloud based, the power to tug that data into your datacenter may be essentially the mostsome of the most cost-effective choice. Again, you may as well use tape to maintain costs down. If you’re using cloud storage as a backend to on-premises applications, making a further copy of information before it goes to a single cloud provider is a brilliant move.

Cloud compute and cloud storage come faraway from the Nirvanix shutdown essentially unscathed. IT professionals come away slightly wiser, with a number of more lessons under their belts. And cloud naysayers ought to find one more reason to complain.

Buying power and influence are rapidly shifting to service providers. Where does that leave enterprise IT? Not on the leading edge, that’s needless to say: Only 19% are increasing both the number and capability of servers, budgets are level or down for 60%, and just 12% are using new microtechnology. Discover more within the 2014 State Of Server Technology report (free registration required).

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