Years ago, Velocity Network Solutions helped one of its clients put data in the Nirvanix storage service. When Nirvanix declared bankruptcy and announced it was shutting down Oct. 15, Velocity wanted to help its client exit. But it needed assistance to get the data out.
Nirvanix initially gave its partners, including IT service providers, such as Velocity, only two weeks’ notice. “The large size of Nirvanix, along with its rapid cease of support, makes this closure one for the books,” wrote a Velocity staffer posting to the company’s blog Sept. 19.
Moving terabytes or petabytes of data out of a cloud service takes time, possibly more time than Nirvanix seemed to be willing to allow. “An extremely short migration window combined with a massive amount of client data is enough to cause an IT consultant to keel over from a heart attack,” the blogger wrote.
Velocity put the data in Nirvanix on behalf of one of its large clients, who must remain unnamed, according to Velocity CEO Thad Gerber in an interview. Velocity first realized the trouble both it and its client were in when Nirvanix informed Velocity that it could continue to load data into its service only for another 24 hours — the “get lost” warning for new data. After that, all uploads would be refused. And the option to download would be shut off in two weeks, Gerber said.