SolidFire, Red Hat: SSD Storage for OpenStack Cloud

It’s been a big week for solid-state device (SSD) storage and the channel. Earlier this week, Intel (INTC) unveiled a new line of SSD hardware for the cloud and Big Data. Then, a day later, SolidFire, which provides SSD storage infrastructure for cloud hosts, announced a partnership with Red Hat (RHT) that will integrate the company into Red Hat’s OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network. Here are the details on this latest news.

The deal centers around the Cinder component of OpenStack, an open source infrastructure for building clouds. Cinder is the part that handles storage devices (or, to be more specific, and more geeky, block storage), including the SSD-based kind that SolidFire sells.

SolidFire already works with Cinder—and, actually, the company is a major contributor to the software platform. But the partnership between the two open source vendors certifies SolidFire for use as a storage platform for Red Hat’s OpenStack distribution, guaranteeing seamless block storage performance for customers of the two companies.

The announcement follows similar agreements by SolidFire last month with Nebula and Rackspace (RAX), with which the company is also partnering on OpenStack deployment.

Alongside similar moves promoting the use of SSD storage for the cloud and Big Data, this announcement is another reminder that this next-generation storage technology will be key to the evolution of Big Data and the cloud. OpenStack, a type of software that didn’t even exist just a few years ago, is hugely innovative and forward-oriented, so why should it rely on legacy storage techniques? Channel partners are clearly betting it won’t.