NooBaa wraps AWS S3 wool around Microsoft Azure Blob storage

Microsoft has partnered with object storage software startup NooBaa, which has developed an Amazon S3-compatible front-end to Azure. NooBaa produces object storage software that can put to work under-utilized compute cores and storage capacity on x86 servers and desktops around a customer's IT equipment estate, and make it all …

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft partners with object storage software startup NooBaa

"Microsoft has partnered with object storage software startup NooBaa .. The Linux-based NooBaa virtual machine can access "Azure capacity through an Amazon-compatible S3 storage interface"

More likely, Microsoft takes yet another potential rival off the board. And what about the potential 'balance sheet liability' of using a Linux based s3 front end.

[cloudguy]

Sounds more like a Rube Goldberg Virtual S3 Machine

Well, with just a couple of million in funding, NooBaa isn't going to upset the object-based storage market anytime soon. Storage takes a lot of time to get right and to get traction because storage is a foundational computing technology that tends to be very conservative. Apps can and do crash all the time, but your storage better not. Some of the current group of object-based storage vendors like Amplidata (HGST), Caringo, Cleversafe (IBM), Cloudian, Scality, and SwiftStack have been working at it for more than a couple of years and with multiples of the funding NooBaa has received.

The idea of scavenging around for underutilized storage on desktop computers and servers and presenting this as a secure, stable and reliable way to do object storage takes a leap of faith. Symform, which was founded by several ex-Microsoft employees six years ago, tried something like this as a way to do backup using underutilied storage on computers anywhere in the world using a control plane on AWS for managing it. Symform was bought by Quantum a couple of years ago and Quantum recently shuttered the Symform business unit. So much for the "innovation" of coming up with ways to leverage underutilized storage on desktop computers and servers.