TwinStrata launched CloudArray as an iSCSI virtual appliance in May 2010, and added a physical appliance later in the year. The gateway moves data off to public cloud providers. With CloudArray 3.0, TwinStrata is trying to appeal to customers who want to expand their SAN and private clouds.

“We are broadening our ecosystem of the private and public cloud, and also leveraging existing storage as a starting point,” TwinStrata CEO Nicos Vekiarides said. “We are enabling customers to create a hybrid configuration to combine existing assets.”

Vekiarides said by letting customers use CloudArray on existing storage, they can access their data from anywhere. He claims TwinStrata is enabling a Cloud SAN, with multi-tenancy and multi-site scalability along with local speed performance, data reduction, high availability, encryption, centralized disaster recovery and capacity management.

With CloudArray 3.0, TwinStrata also has automated its caching capability. TwinStrata’s appliance uses the storage on a JBOD or host RAID controller or array for cache. Previously, the cache capacity had to be manually configured.

TwinStrata also added support for Nirvanix’s Cloud Storage Network, Rackspace and OpenSpace private and public clouds.

Mike Kahn, managing director at The Clipper Group, said TwinStrata’s 3.0 release allows customers to “put a veil over existing storage so it can be used as one or more tiers of storage. And over time, they can move to a public or private cloud,” he said.