Gluster Community Expands to Drive Open Software-Defined Storage Innovation

New Gluster Community Forge Brings Together Multiple Open Source Storage Communities and Projects

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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the Gluster Community, a Red Hat-sponsored community, has extended its charter from a single project to a multi-project open source community for open software-defined storage. This expansion addresses increasing interest in full-featured open software-defined storage solutions and marks another milestone in the growth of the Gluster Community from a tightly-controlled open core project to an open source ecosystem with a rapidly growing number of projects and contributors.

The expanding role played by open source communities in the disruption of the storage market is expected to fuel the growth of the new Gluster Community and open software-defined storage. In an IDC Vendor Profile on Red Hat as a Storage solutions provider, IDC stated, “The commoditization of storage and the open source storage stack is in essence a disruptive and unstoppable force that will change the ways of the traditional storage market dominated by vendors selling proprietary hardware and software.”1

To facilitate this expansion and provide a home for related projects, the Gluster Community now includes the Gluster Community Forge, a Gitorious-based collaborative development environment where like-minded developers and organizations can incubate, develop and collaborate on new open software defined storage projects. The Gluster Community Forge aims to accelerate the growth of community-driven innovation around GlusterFS and greatly enhance developer and user collaboration.

“The innovation taking place right now in the software industry is around open source projects and ecosystems,” said Amanda McPhereson, vice president of marketing and developer programs, The Linux Foundation. “The Gluster Community's expansion to support an ecosystem for software-defined storage is an example of how collaborative development and open source software can be quickly adapted to address industry change.”

Initial new projects span an increasingly wider range of related storage projects across manageability, mobility, security, availability, disaster recovery, interoperability, and storage for big data and cloud computing. Examples of new projects in the Gluster Community Forge include an HDFS Plugin, pmux (file-based mapReduce), gflocator, SAMBA integration, and Dispersed Volume. To include a project for incubation, visit https://forge.gluster.org/projects/new to create a new project.

The Gluster Community has been on the leading edge of development since 2005 when GlusterFS project developers realized that the shift to storage software on commodity hardware would have significant ramifications for the global storage industry.

John Mark Walker, Gluster Community lead, Red Hat, said, “The Gluster Community Forge and project expansion marks a significant milestone for the Gluster Community. We continue to build momentum globally, growing from a single, open core project to a global open source community with contributions by individual engineers, educational and research communities and organizations. Similar to way the Fedora Community shaped software-defined compute, the goal of the Gluster Community is to transform software-defined storage.”

The Gluster Community uses community-driven innovation to enable organizations to deploy an open software-defined storage fabric and platform that allows for extreme data portability and mobility. GlusterFS is an open source, distributed file system capable of scaling to several petabytes while handling thousands of clients. Based on a stackable user space design, GlusterFS can deliver linear scale-out performance for diverse workloads.

To interact with the Gluster Community on Twitter, follow @GlusterOrg. For more information about the Gluster Community and the Gluster Community Forge visit www.gluster.org.

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, taking a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. 

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1November 2012, IDC #237976, Volume: 1
Storage Solutions: File-based Storage: Vendor Profile


 

  • About Red Hat
  • Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.



  • Forward-Looking Statements
  • Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.