The world’s largest Linux software and services provider, Red Hat, got into the storage software business in October 2011 by acquiring a virtual appliance-type file system, Gluster, which enables access to the same data as both an object and as a file.
Red Hat wasted no time in producing its first Red Hat Storage Software Appliance based on Gluster, which hit the market only two months later. The company reported a strong uptake in the first appliance, especially within its installed base.
On April 9, Red Hat announced the beta availability of Red Hat Storage 2.0. RHS 2.0 unifies data storage and infrastructure and improves the availability and manageability of large data stores, Red Hat claims.
Red Hat Storage 2.0 includes compatibility for Apache Hadoop, providing a new storage option for such deployments. This new functionality enables faster file access and opens up data within Hadoop deployments to other file-based or object-based applications, Red Hat said.
Other features inside the new beta, according to Red Hat, include:
Unified file and object access: Red Hat Storage 2.0 provides the industrys first release of file storage designed to integrate with object storage, offering organizations greater information accessibility, within a single, centralized storage pool.
Built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Red Hat Storage 2.0 is built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, which provides a secure, high-performing, flexible enterprise-class operating environment. The appliance uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s extended update support capabilities and the XFS file system (Red Hat’s Scalable File System Add-On) to provide the core operating base platform.
Performance enhancements: These include faster rebalancing, performance tuning enhancements and Network File System Version 3 (NFSv3) performance optimization.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization-readiness: This enables organizations to use Red Hat Storage as a storage layer for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.
Improved manageability: New capabilities that make it even easier to manage a Red Hat Storage cluster, including enhanced data management with Network Lock Manager (NLM) compliance, new event history information availability, additional storage brick level information, and improved visibility into self-healing operations and status.
Go here for more details about the RHS 2.0 beta program. For more information on Red Hats approach to managing unstructured data, go here.