MediaHub’s ArkHub: Low Cost Archive Storage

MediaHub Australia has completely revolutionised low cost archive storage with the launch of ArkHub, its multi-industry agnostic solution that is highly reliable, highly scalable, easy to use and with all the features of the major deep archive vendors but without the ingress, egress, retrieval and region costs which the major vendors levy their clients with. This in turn totally eliminates the possibility of “bill shock”. From a storage and archival point of view, the opportunities made possible by ArkHub in any industry are not only transparent and ultra-cost efficient, but endless.

ArkHub is truly unique as, born with a broadcast industry pedigree, it meets all the needs and requirements of even the most security conscious, enterprise-level industries including government, health, banking, financial services, energy, defence, education, media and entertainment.

MediaHub CEO Alan Sweeney explained, “ArkHub is a total gamechanger that completely eradicates the single biggest complaint in the storage and archive world – bill shock. It has been specifically developed as a low-cost storage service that provides secure, durable and flexible storage for data backup-archive, with a considerably simplified pricing model. 

“ArkHub is also founded on and thus able to embrace MediaHub’s tough, resilient and efficient broadcast industry heritage. This is a heritage which demands, and has always demanded, the upmost security and reliability in every workflow. In the broadcast industry we deal in large, high density, high volume, complex files that need to be transferred quickly and efficiently – and we do this successfully and seamlessly 24 hours a day 7 days a week. That is the foundation of ArkHub’s core development and offering.”

ArkHub pricing allows clients to store their data for only a monthly storage cost, with no further ingress or egress charges, no early deletion or embargo fees and no region fees. Critically ArkHub does not limit clients to storing their data specifically as an ‘archive’. Clients can upload a single file or perform a bulk upload with no price difference as ArkHub is simply a fixed price per gigabyte per month fee. That’s it. There are no extra or hidden fees, no surprise costs and thus no bill shock.

ArkHub not only provides low-cost storage with a simplified pricing model, but also provides the same or better functionality, reliability and ease of use when compared to the current major public cloud storage providers of deep archive.

Connecting to ArkHub is very easy and can be done either via the public internet using ArkHub WebConnect which is a secure, encrypted and accelerated web access portal or via ArkHub DirectConnect, which uses MediaHub hosted connectors.

Using ArkHub WebConnect, clients can transfer files from one location to another from anywhere in the world. Based on CatonNET’s incredibly flexible, powerful and easy-to-use Cydex software, its advanced protocol allows for the fastest possible throughput with an intuitive user interface. Seamless integration with HPE’s industry leading object-based S3 storage was done through MediaHub’s solution provider, RedFig Group.

Commenting on how ArkHub came into existence and why, Sweeney said, “For some time now MediaHub has received requests from our clients for an archive solution where they are able to re-use their content without the un-intended, unbudgeted and often substantial egress and ingress costs typically associated with deep archive solutions. In short, they wanted to avoid bill shock. 

“In addition to this enterprise-level clients do not want to invest in their own private island, small scale backup systems and are seeking to outsource these capabilities. They are also looking to a partner to provide a secure service for a second or third backup storage system to mitigate any issue with a single supplier for backup. ArkHub easily, simply and cost-effectively meets all their requirements, has no possibility of bill shock and thus is the solution they and the rest of the market have been requesting.”

In addition, as their long term technology partner, Hewlett Packard Enterprise also worked with MediaHub to identify significant demand from many industries who were desperately looking for lower cost deep storage solutions making ArkHub an ideal proposition in the current market.

Further complementing the ArkHub value proposition is MediaHub’s key foundational layer of connectivity via its FibreHub solution that enables the pricing model of zero ingress and egress fees for enterprise level clients. This in combination with FibreHub’s high speeds to all the major broadcasters, as well as datacentres such as NEXTDC, Global Switch, Equinix and Telstra Oxford Falls provides an ideal, unrivalled and ultra-efficient launch pad for ArkHub.

MediaHub Head of Technology, Simon Scott added, “ArkHub is a highly cost effective and complete self-healing archive storage solution which has multi-exabyte scalability, is optimised for enterprise cloud environments and is ‘always-on’ with a 100% availability SLA and 14×9 durability SLA. We wanted ArkHub to be truly flexible and agile, which is why it is designed to be compatible with over 100 Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and over 50 backup and archive products in the market, including Veeam, Commvault, Veritas, Net Back Up, Cohesity and Ruberik.

ArkHub is 100% vendor backed and utilises the highly-acclaimed Scality file, object and data storage technology. This technology is already proven and used by over 500 million end-users worldwide with over 800 billion objects in production. 

Alan Sweeney concluded, “For clients who need safe access to their archived data, the monthly cost of ArkHub is designed to be lower than the major deep archive vendors. ArkHub allows clients to easily and accurately budget for their data storage costs without the fear of bill shock as a result of unforeseen charges from managing and utilising their valuable archived data. With even a moderate amount of archived data management and retrieval ArkHub will result in lower data storage lifecycle costs. In other words ArkHub is a secure, reliable, robust, efficient, low cost archive storage solution for any industry.” 

Additional benefits of ArkHub deep storage:

• Storage is 100% disk, not tape. Tape is available as an option.
• Clients know exactly where this content is stored and it is guaranteed to be locally on shore.
• All clients have a point of contact in the event that assistance is required.
• All clients are provided with an in-built management layer to allow for self-management of their content 24/7.