Unlike traditional file systems, which "use symbolic names for folders and files in b-tree based directory structures," according to Caringo, Unique IDs (UIDs) assigned to objects can be used without changing, regardless of on what disk or node the object is being stored.

"Named Objects," in turn, are "like user-assigned names versus system names," said Caringo. By using UIDs, a company may have billions of objects in a storage environment, each uniquely named and identified. "Most file systems can't scale to this many entries and slow down as you have more things," said Goros. "Our approach doesn't slow down the cluster as the number of objects grows."

"Named objects are ideal for applications requiring a self-generated or symbolic name to store and retrieve a file or object," according to the company. For example, said Goros, "If you are dealing with a large photo-sharing site that automatically generates filenames, CAStor can take and use these names."

Caringo's new Named Objects semantics "are consistent with the emerging de facto standards of popular public cloud storage services, such as Amazon S3 services, enhancing Web 2.0 usability of a Caringo CAStor cloud environment," according to the company.

For larger SMBs and enterprises, CAStor 5.0's new multi-tenancy feature lets multiple departments or divisions be hosted within one physical private cloud, "with each maintaining total security and authenticated separation without requiring multiple hardware configurations," according to the company.

Multi-tenancy lets enterprise IT give each tenant its own domain for user content, and lets storage service companies provide each client company with its own domain, within a common storage infrastructure.