Sun moves towards open storage framework | | 2008-05-04 | | Sun Microsystems, traditionally the least successful vendor to bundle storage sales with server sales, is promoting a more open system to challenge the proprietary model.
Last month Sun announced a free download for the OpenSolaris operating system. The company claims customers can download and install OpenSolaris on any server to create a NAS appliance within 10 minutes.
As part of its commitment to open source developers, Sun is now offering tools to allow their applications to interface directly with OpenSolaris storage commands to do a full range of data tasks. These include ZFS (Sun’s open source file system), NFS (Network File System), CIFS (CIFS (Common Internet File System), and COMSTAR (Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target).
Sun plan to sell empty disk arrays, allowing customers to populate them with whatever drives they prefer.
The company also hopes its open source approach will accelerate the uptake and integration of purpose built flash drive arrays now in development.
| |
|
