December 8, 2011

Red Hat unveiled today a software-based network attached storage appliance for unstructured data. Built with GlusterF2 3.2 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, the appliance is pools storage and then makes data available for organizations with huge storage requirements. The Red Hat Storage Software Appliance provides high availability and recovery with synchronous n-way file replication and proves resilience across data centers with asynchronous geo-replication. It offers thin provisioning of storage from a single global storage pool and supports NFS, CIFS and the native GlusterFS. The Storage Software Appliance can be installed on a variety of Red Hat Storage Hardware Compatibility List-certified servers and storage.

Our take: Gluster has worked fast to integrate its products into the Red Hat portfolio since its acquisition in October of this year. They’ve already made available the Virtual Storage Appliance for cloud deployments and are now offering this software-based storage appliance. This integration may raise Red Hat’s mindshare in storage.