People living in Japan have not had it easy in recent days—living with the aftermath of a historical earthquake and tsunami and then a nuclear meltdown. Recently, Nirvanix, a provider of enterprise-class cloud storage services, has decided to offer help to those in Japan through its industry offerings.

Nirvanix (News - Alert) announced that in response to the earthquake and tsunami, those customers currently storing data in Nirvanix’s Node 3 data centers in Japan will now have the option of moving their data to other locations in the Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network, either on a temporary or full-time basis, free of charge. While all of the data currently stored in the Node 3 data center is secure and about 200 miles away from the point of impact, customers can still choose to move their data if they are looking for “peace of mind,” according to company officials.

“Our hearts and minds are with those impacted in Japan and we are standing by ready to assist our customers during this tragic time," said Scott Genereux, president and CEO of Nirvanix, in a statement. “One of the business benefits our customers have by leveraging Nirvanix cloud solutions is the ability to move data whenever they need to, across continents. Should our customers have the desire to move their data out of region, we will make sure that it is transitioned smoothly and in a timely manner, with absolutely no disruption to their business operations."

The cloud storage company ensures that the data centers are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, since the data centers are fully redundant, including redundant diesel generator power backups and full UPS redundancy to maintain full power at all times. But customers who are still worried about their data may opt to switch to another data center.

Nirvanix customers can choose where they would like their data to specifically reside. Data relocation options outside of Japan include four additional Nirvanix data centers, including three in the U.S. (Los Angeles, New York and Dallas) and one in Frankfurt, Germany.

"In times like these we want to send money, aid, resources or prayers," said David Vellante, president and co-founder of Wikibon.org, a leading IT think tank. "This gesture by Nirvanix is business helping other businesses in a time of need, taking advantage of the global footprint of the Web and the resilient power of the cloud. It makes us begin to re-think business continuity in the 21st century."

At the beginning of January, Cirtas, a cloud storage provider company, argued all businesses should invest in some sort of  disaster recovery (DR) strategy for their data, “a kind of insurance policy that allows the business to continue to operate after a catastrophic site failure due to flood, fire, theft, avalanche, volcanic eruption,” according to Cirtas officials.

“Since most businesses can’t operate without access to their data, a solid DR plan that covers catastrophic failure is easily the most important insurance policy that a business can buy,” Cirtas officials wrote in a recent blog post.

Cirtas, a 2010 Red Herring Top 100 North America Company, aims to make cloud storage work like on–site storage arrays. To deliver robust cloud storage solutions, Cirtas recently relies on its Bluejet Cloud Storage Controller, a storage controller with the ability to turn vast amounts of cloud storage resources into enterprise-class storage in the data center.