NAS Storage Server

I recently had to do a virtualization demo for a client. The need was to show a particular application stack running under ESXi, using storage mounted from a SAN. This all needed to be portable, inexpensive, and completed quickly. The requirements limited me to stuff I could find quickly, and that would work. As such, I really only considered FreeNAS, OpenFiler, and Windows Storage Server since they were all readily available.

I ended-up using FreeNAS, and was actually quite impressed.

Read remainder of blog post (addicted-to-it.blogpost.com)

Fusion-io, the leader in enterprise solid state architecture and high-performance I/O solutions, today announced the company is working with its vendor of the year, Samsung Semiconductor, to create the next generation of server-deployed, network-attached solid-state storage solutions that build on Samsung’s industry leading, enterprise NAND Flash technology.

Samsung’s NAND chips offer the largest memory capacity and longest lifespan available, while Fusion’s ioMemory controller extends this already exceptional life, adding enterprise level features with unparalleled performance to some of the largest server companies.

Cooperating closely to drive solid-state innovation, the two companies are contributing toward a steady evolution from server-attached to server-deployed, network-attached storage. Samsung was selected as Fusion-io’s vendor of the year last month as a result of the extensive support Samsung has provided the company over the past year.

“Samsung’s exceptional level of cooperation has helped us immeasurably in being able to offer an enterprise storage alternative that is more impressive than earlier iterations—a tightly integrated, ultra-fast solid state storage solution with no equal in today’s marketplace,”

said David Bradford, Chief Executive Officer of Fusion-io.

“Fusion-io has developed new types of solid state storage products, and our work with them will enable enterprises to take advantage of this innovative technology in the very near future,”

said Jim Elliott, Vice President, Memory Marketing of Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.

Announced on BusinessWire

It’s just a tiny part of a $13 billion company, but Sun Microsystems’ (NASDAQ: JAVA) Open Storage program exemplifies everything the company had hoped to achieve in its turnaround efforts.

Built on intelligent storage controllers, industry standard hardware and open source software, the program achieved 63 percent year-over-year growth in billings in one of the worst markets in memory for data storage spending.

What’s more, the program has been able to convert users who download Sun’s open source software into paying customers, realizing a central vision of CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

“We’re able to monetize a lot of these open source opportunities,” said Graham Lovell, director of Sun’s Open Storage efforts. “We’re the poster child for the success of Jonathan’s strategy.”

With $127 million in billings in the last four quarters, just a small part of Sun’s $2 billion data storage business, the Open Storage program might not be big enough to have much of an effect on Sun’s overall business, but Lovell said he and other members of the team have joked about what a good startup the program would make.

“If this was a startup, we’d be having celebrations in the street,” he said.

Read whole article (enterprisestorageforum.com)

This is a great way to build UNIX based NAS server with all goodness of ZFS.

Sun recently announced the addition of powerful developer tools and expanded professional service capabilities to help developers better leverage the growing open source communities that are fast changing the economics of the storage IT landscape. Over 3,000 members and 30+ projects within an active and growing OpenSolaris storage community demonstrate a groundswell within the storage industry for developers and enterprise companies to use open source alternatives to expensive proprietary storage offerings.

Sun further claimed that average developer will be able to set up an OpenSolaris server is about 10 minutes. You can build a OpenSolaris operating system storage server in 10 minutes or less. This how-to recipe is intended to familiarize developers with the simple commands in Solaris for performing data management tasks, i.e. ZFS, NFS, CIFS, COMSTAR etc.

Setting Up an OpenSolaris Storage Server in 10 Minutes or Less

Setting Up an OpenSolaris NAS Box: Father-Son Bonding

Source:  Cybercity.biz

It truly is a beautiful thing when something just works. This is especially true with computers. High capacity storage has become almost a commodity with the price of an external 1 TB USB hovering around $100. All you have to do is plug in the power and connect the USB cable, and you’ve got instant storage expansion. Works great for a single computer, and you could even unplug it from one and plug it into another. While that does work, it tends to get old after a while, and if you’re using that method for backups, you will more than likely end up forgetting or just quitting altogether at some point.

Network Attached Storage (NAS) is one answer to sharing large storage devices over a network. You could buy a NAS device from your favorite local or Internet supplier, but chances are you’ll wind up with something less than what a “real” NAS has to offer. That’s where VIA’s ARTiGO A2000 comes in. The A2000 fits a full-featured computer with space for two 3.5″ SATA drives in a package about the size of a shoebox. Add to the hardware the FreeNAS open source software and you’ve got a really capable storage solution.

Read further (LinuxPlanet – 17/04/2009)