10 Storage Products For OpenStack Clouds

Storage At The Center Of OpenStack, And Of OpenStack Clouds

Storage is one of the key building blocks of clouds, and so it was no surprise that storage technology was a key part of the recent OpenStack Summit.

Several vendors used the conference to show a variety of storage hardware and software targeting OpenStack environments and helping make OpenStack a more enterprise-friendly place in which to build their clouds.

Intrigued by the possibilities? Then turn the page and go with CRN back to the OpenStack Summit to look at some of the storage technologies shown there.

Brocade: Working With Huawei On OpenStack Multi-Tenancy

Brocade and Huawei unveiled a proposal they jointly developed for a new OpenStack service to simplify the manageability and efficiency of inter-data center multitenancy for managed service providers and cloud service providers.

The proposal targets flexible and automated solutions that address issues related to maintaining connectivity and policy context for virtual machines migrating between data centers, and addresses the challenge of using multiple data centers as a distributed pool of on-demand resources, Brocade said.

Brocade also unveiled Fibre Channel (FC) Zone Manager as part of the OpenStack Icehouse release, which extends Fibre Channel support for Cinder, the OpenStack Block Storage service, to provide automated SAN zoning.

CTERA: Enhancing Cloud Storage

Palo Alto, Calif.-based CTERA used the OpenStack Summit to enhance its Cloud Storage Services Platform with improved file sync and share functionalities with the addition of multifolder and multiproject sync capability. The enhancement lets CTERA's platform support team collaboration, file dissemination, and FTP replacement integration with cloud storage gateways and sync for folders across multiple devices, CTERA said.

Cloud Storage Services Platform lets customers deploy a scalable, multitenant and self-servicing solution in conjunction with a variety of object-based storage and public cloud storage providers, including OpenStack Swift, AWS S3 and EMC ViPR.

HGST: Open Ethernet Drive Architecture

San Jose, Calif.-based storage drive manufacturer HGST used the OpenStack Summit to demonstrate its new open Ethernet drive architecture. That architecture, according to HGST, shows how data centers can seamlessly scale-out storage infrastructures and run new and existing applications distributed directly onto hard drives and SSDs.

Storage solutions such as OpenStack Swift, Ceph and Red Hat Storage Server run in the open architecture without modification, the company said.

NetApp: Partnering For OpenStack Storage

NetApp showcased new open source cloud management solutions that work with its storage solutions.

The first is a collaboration with Red Hat to deliver an open hybrid cloud reference architecture based on the OpenStack IceHouse open source cloud software platform. The collaboration lets customers integrate Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform with NetApp storage and data management solutions to seamlessly build scalable and reliable private and hybrid clouds, the company said.

The second is new functionality for the OpenStack IceHouse release, including a move to bring Cinder block storage to NetApp's E-Series array family in addition to its FAS appliances, which already had that capability.

Pluribus Networks: Startup Serious About SDN

Pluribus Networks, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup SDN developer, showed OpenStack orchestration based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

The company said its SDN solutions integrate compute and networking to converge the OpenStack orchestration environment into the top-of-rack by leveraging its open-standards-based Freedom platform with Netvisor-based network virtualization. The platform allows customers to set per-tenant and per-application QoS (quality of service).

Because the Pluribus Freedom's integrated server hardware and storage can host the OpenStack controller in addition to other network services, there is no need for separate orchestration hardware within the rack.

Red Hat And Supermicro: Object-Based Storage Solution

Red Hat and system builder Supermicro showed a new server and storage solution optimized for Red Hat's Inktank Ceph object-based storage technology, which Red Hat got with its Inktank acquisition. The solution fits 2.16 petabytes of storage capacity into a 42U rack.

The companies said the solution, which leverages Inktank Ceph's data synchronization and balancing capabilities, provides capacity and scalability while maintaining performance levels to meet SLAs.

Scality: Petabyte-scale Software-Defined Storage On Commodity Hardware

San Francisco-based Scality used the OpenStack Summit to show off its Linux-based software-defined petabyte scale unified data storage platform running on commodity hardware. The platform provides object storage technology with such capabilities as replication and erasure coding, tiering and exposure via multiple interfaces and APIs.

Scality's platform, which previously supported multiple object APIs as Scality REST API, Amazon S3 API, CDMI and OpenStack Swift, now also includes such file-sharing protocols as NFS, CIFS, AFP and its own Scale Out File System. The platform also has a block interface to OpenStack via the Cinder.

Seagate: Further Opening Its Kinetic Platform

Seagate Technology unveiled plans to expand the open source program associated with its Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform to include APIs and libraries as a way to make it easier for its hardware and software partners to leverage the platform and integrate it into cloud software stacks, additional devices and new systems.

The Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform adds APIs and Ethernet connectivity to hard drives for use in building scale-out architectures. The libraries today include support for the C++, Java and Python languages, and also aim to encourage developers to leverage the protocol directly and write their own libraries, Seagate said.

SolidFire: Reference Architecture For OpenStack

Boulder, Colo.-based all-flash storage vendor SolidFire on May 13 unveiled the release of its first Agile Infrastructure reference architecture for OpenStack.

The SolidFire Agile Infrastructure is a prevalidated, converged infrastructure design for start-to-finish deployments of an OpenStack cloud infrastructure, including compute, networking, flash storage and orchestration, in less than one hour, the company said. Future versions of the reference architecture with additional orchestration software are expected in the near future.

Violin Memory: Joins The OpenStack Foundation

Violin Memory, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based developer of all-flash storage arrays and appliances, has joined the OpenStack Foundation as a corporate member to collaborate with other industry leaders and promote open standards for cloud computing.

Violin offers its all flash storage arrays with an iSCSI plug-in option for customers running business applications on the OpenStack platform. Currently in beta is a Fibre Channel plug-in supporting OpenStack that Violin expects will be available this quarter.