Open Source Makes Storage Presence Felt
From operating systems to network switches, open source software has transformed the way IT is both acquired and managed. So it should come as no surprise that the same phenomenon is now starting to play out in storage.
Case in point is Nexenta, which has begun building a community around an open source implementation of a software-defined storage (SDS) platform called OpenSDS for file and block storage. Nexenta already claims to have 46,000 IT professionals participating in its open source community, including International Computer Concepts (ICC), a solution provider based in Northbrook, Ill.
Nexenta claims it already has more than 6,000 customers and more than 1,000 partners using its storage platform. Because OpenSDS is 100 percent software-based, solution providers can deploy on premise or in the cloud as they see fit, without having to lock themselves or their customers into a particular hardware platform, said Don Lopes, director of Channel for Nexenta.
In fact, Lopes said, the stated goal for Nexenta is nothing short of upending enterprise storage vendors such as EMC and NetApp, which have generated billions of dollars in storage software and hardware revenue.
In the case of ICC, Alexey Stolyar, development director, said the solution provider opts to deliver a hardened implementation of OpenSDS along with other commercial Nexenta products that extend OpenSDS on an Intel x86 appliance. While some customers and solution providers may decide to download raw bits of open source software, Stolyar said most customers prefer ICC to do that on their behalf using enterprise editions of various Nexenta software modules.That makes OpenSDS a very profitable endeavor for ICC.
Of course, OpenSDS is not the only open source storage game in town. The OpenStack community has been building out a Swift object storage system. Lopes said that as that open source project continues to mature OpenSDS will incorporate components where applicable.
In the meantime, as IT organizations look for ways to manage storage at scale, there is a massive shift underway to software-defined storage platforms. Naturally, every major storage vendor has its own flavor of SDS. But at a time when many organizations also have a stated policy of opting to deploy open source software first, Lopes said it's getting easier to usurp some the best-known players in the storage industry.
In addition, Nexenta already has a fairly extensive list of technology partners, including VMware (VMW), Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Cisco Systems (CSCO), all of which serve to expose its technologies to a wider breath of partners in the channel.
IT organizations won't switch to open source storage software overnight. But it’s pretty clear at this point that many of them are a lot more open to that possibility than ever before.
