Commvault’s AWS cloud-app-protecting subsidiary Clumio is protecting Iceberg data in AWS while MinIO is adding Iceberg table support to its AIStor object storage software.
Open source Apache Iceberg operates as a data lakehouse software layer above storage systems like Parquet, ORC, and Avro, and cloud object stores such as AWS S3, Azure Blob, and Google Cloud Storage. It is an open table format for large-scale analytics, providing ACID transactions, schema versioning, and time travel. The querying of data in its tables is provided by Apache Flink, Presto, Spark, Trino, and other analytics engines. Clumio is a Commvault-acquired business that protects customer data in AWS.
Commvault’s Woon Jung, CTO Cloud Native, stated: “With Clumio for Apache Iceberg, we are providing the industry’s first true safety net for the data lakehouse. For the first time, organisations can protect their AI and analytics data with an air-gapped, automated solution, allowing them to accelerate innovation with confidence.”
Clumio for Apache Iceberg on AWS provides fast, reliable, virtually air-gapped, and transactionally consistent backups that intrinsically understand Iceberg table structures and captures a complete state of the data in them. It safeguards backups in an isolated environment, protecting them against ransomware, account compromise, and accidental or malicious deletions. Compliance and governance requirements are supported and Commvault claims this is the data protection industry’s only offering to protect such data.
We’re told native Iceberg snapshots are typically tied to the source account, lack an air-gapped copy, and are not designed for large-scale, point-in-time recovery, making them vulnerable to data loss, ransomware attacks, and compliance risks. Restoring from non-Iceberg-aware backups often requires complex manual processes to rewire and reconfigure tables, leading to extended downtime and a high risk of data inconsistency.
Clumio for Apache Iceberg marks the latest step, Commvault says, in its strategy to deliver comprehensive resilience for the entire AWS data pipeline. It already protects S3, DynamoDB, RDS/Aurora, and EC2/EBS.
Learn more about Clumio for Apache Iceberg on AWS here. Clumio for Apache Iceberg is now generally available in the AWS Marketplace, supporting both self-managed tables via the AWS Glue Data Catalog and fully managed tables via Amazon S3 Tables.
MinIO
MinIO has added native Apache Iceberg support to its AIStor offering via a powerful new Tables feature and integrating the Iceberg Catalog API directly into AIStor. Iceberg has traditionally been considered primarily a tool for analytics on structured data. With AIStor’s native Iceberg implementation, enterprises can now unify all their structured and unstructured data – whether tables, transactions, images, audio and more – into a single, coherent fabric. This strengthens the efficacy of AI workloads from analytics to agentic AI, because AI can now act on all enterprise knowledge, not just a subset.
AB Periasamy, MinIO co-founder and co-CEO, said: “Iceberg is the clear standard for enterprise AI data. The challenge is that most on-prem implementations make it harder than it needs to be, requiring separate catalog databases and extra layers of infrastructure that add cost and operational risk. By building Iceberg directly into AIStor, we take away that complexity and give enterprises a simple, scalable foundation for AI. This not only lowers costs and speeds progress, but also ensures AI can reach its full potential because all data is AI data.”
AIStor Tables works out of the box with existing tools and query engines including Spark, Trino, Dremio, and Starburst, protecting past investments. As the only object-native on-premises object store with the Apache Iceberg REST catalog built-in, AIStor unifies tabular and object data to power agentic AI and lakehouse analytics. Just as MinIO brought the Amazon S3 experience to every datacenter, MinIO is now doing the same for Iceberg with AIStor Tables – making the enterprise AI standard available at scale, on-premises. AIStor Tables is available immediately in tech preview.
Comment
Both MinIO and Cloudian are making their object storage offerings AI-aware and relevant. They recognize that unstructured data in their systems will be used by AI models and agents, requiring vector support and easier access. Cloudian also supports Iceberg tables, storing them as files in S3 buckets.
