VAST Data, a storage company breaking decades-old tradeoffs, today launched Version 3 of its Universal Storage architecture, which has more than 20 new features - including support for Windows and MacOS applications, cloud data replication and native encryption. These innovations, which quickly follow the company's $100 million Series C funding round at a $1.2 billion valuation in mid-April, introduce new capabilities for mission-critical enterprise and media customers who are eager to evolve beyond the hard drive and realize the full potential of VAST's Disaggregated, Shared-Everything (DASE) approach.

These latest Universal Storage updates allow enterprises to now marry all-flash performance with archive economics and scale to enable mission-critical and data-intensive enterprise production environments to consolidate their workflows and bring the power of flash storage and fast access to all of their data. Highlights of this release include:

• SMB support for Windows and MacOS applications: VAST has developed its own SMB server stack to power high throughput Windows and Mac applications. This full VAST solution enables enterprise customers to enjoy seamless multi-protocol access between NFS and SMB as well as the performance needed for media and entertainment organizations. In addition, VAST's new ultra-resilient SMB server enables seamless failover of SMB clients where legacy NAS storage systems force customers to take a downtime event.
• Cloud-Based Backups: VAST's new Snap-to-Object feature allows customers to protect their critical data assets by snapshotting data to another VAST system, an on-premises S3 storage system or the cloud service of their choosing. This low-cost and modern form of system backup enables customers to no longer be reliant on a second data center to implement disaster recovery strategies for their file and object data.
• Native encryption at rest: Version 3 will encrypt user data at rest using FIPS-class AES-256 when it is stored to 3D XPoint and QLC flash. This further strengthens VAST's robust security protocols and provides customers peace of mind that their information remains secure.
• Enhanced data reduction for unstructured data: This release enables VAST to showcase its unique Similarity-Based Data Reduction and delivers dramatic storage efficiency gains to customers who have never experienced any data reduction from their legacy storage options, thereby making flash affordable for all applications. Examples include:
  • A leading hedge fund saved 90% on their time-series data storage capacity
  • A major studio saved 67% on animation data storage capacity
  • Splunk users save over 70% in data storage capacity vs legacy direct-attached methods

• And Much More - With over 20 new features in this release, additional updates include enhanced user behavior monitoring, new performance improvements and management features that make it easy to deploy and scale Universal Storage.

"VAST Data's Universal Storage has the promise to revolutionize customer workflows and dramatically simplify the cost, capacity, scale and resilience problems that have plagued scale-out storage for over a decade," said Aaron Cardenas, Founder and CEO of P1 Technologies - a leading media solutions reseller. "We're delighted to partner with VAST Data after witnessing the excitement and anticipation across their customer community. Version 3 is the beginning of helping our media customers see the benefits of consolidating workflows onto Universal Storage and accelerating and simplifying the creative process."