"Over the last year or so there were a number of problems that contributed to not being able to successfully migrate [data] to The Linkup," Iverson says.

Nirvanix says it has not deleted any customer data, and promises that its Storage Delivery Network is immune to the problem that plagued The Linkup. At The Linkup, a "system administrator ran a script that misidentified active account data and disassociated physical files from their owners," Nirvanix says. "This led to files being marked offline in the old Streamload/MediaMax file system when they shouldn't have been." Iverson, meanwhile, claims it was a Nirvanix engineer who caused the data loss.

Nirvanix says it prevents any similar problems in its own Storage Delivery Network by making the system fully redundant.
"This means that all files, and pointers to those files, are replicated within the system," Nirvanix says. "Furthermore, a series 'checks-and-balances' has been installed natively within the [Nirvanix] framework. If a customer deletes a reference to a file, the system logs the removal of the reference, and leaves the physical file associated intact. After three days, the pointer to the physical file is logged [with a time stamp] and the pointer to that file is removed. Finally, after eight days of the original removal of the customer's reference, the file is deleted off of Nirvanix storage. At any point during this eight-day process, the file can be fully recovered."

Nirvanix's network also contains multiple servers at each site running integrity checks against all files. "Any file which shows even the smallest problem is marked offline and recovered immediately from one of our redundant copies," Nirvanix says.
Nirvanix was featured at NetworkWorld's DEMO 08 conference and tabbed by Network World as one of 10 storage "companies to watch" this month.