Red Hat Redefines Enterprise and Hybrid Cloud Storage

Red Hat Brings Community-Powered Innovation and Volume Economics of Standardization to Multi-Billion Dollar Scale-Out Network Attached Storage (NAS) Market with Red Hat Storage Server 2.0

RALEIGH, N.C -

RALEIGH, N.C. and BOSTON – RED HAT SUMMIT AND JBOSS WORLD 2012 – June 27, 2012 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the global availability of Red Hat Storage Server 2.0, the company’s scale-out, open source storage software solution for the management of unstructured data. Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 transforms the enterprise and cloud storage market by – for the first time – combining community-powered innovation with the volume economics of industry standard x86 servers across on-premise, cloud or hybrid environments.

Across industries, the volume of unstructured data – ranging from social media content, text and emails to image, video and audio files – is exploding as a result of digitization, mobility and our increasingly connected world, and dramatically outpacing the growth of structured data. By 2020, the growth of Internet-connected devices and sensors is projected to reach 50 billion,1 a prediction that supports IDC’s estimate that the total volume of the digital universe – comprised of 90 percent unstructured data and calculated at 1.8 zettabytes in 2011 – will increase by a factor of 50 in 2020.2 As the volume of unstructured data continues to grow, organizations are facing challenges managing both compute and data, and closed source, proprietary and monolithic hardware storage solutions may not be equipped to help organizations deal with this onslaught in a cost-effective or scalable manner.

Red Hat Storage solutions leverage community-powered innovation to address scale-out storage challenges. Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 is the industry’s first file storage solution to integrate easily with object storage, enabling users to combine larger amounts of storage into a single centralized pool. Unified file and object storage simplifies the management of different kinds of data, giving customers powerful storage and information flexibility, the ability to efficiently scale to meet exploding unstructured data storage demands and enhancing information access options in a more cost-effective manner.

Built on the industry-leading Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, Red Hat Storage provides freedom of choice by allowing customers to deploy cost-effective, scalable and highly available storage without compromising on scale or performance. Red Hat Storage Server can easily be deployed on-premise, in private clouds, in public cloud infrastructures or hybrid cloud environments and is optimized for storage-intensive enterprise workloads including high-performance computing, near-line archival and rich media content clouds.

Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 also features the following key innovations:

  • Expanded choice, offering compatibility with more than 50 dual-socket x86-based servers from industry leaders
  • Open and standards-based, Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 features support for industry-leading file access protocols including Common Internet File System (CIFS), Network File System (NFS), HTTP and OpenStack Swift; and
  • Control without compromising data accessibility and availability, including geo-replication, equipping Red Hat Storage to handle the most demanding production workloads.

Available only in Technology Preview, Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 is also offering support for big data infrastructure, with compatibility for Apache Hadoop that provides a new storage option for Hadoop deployments. With the ability to install Red Hat Storage in Hadoop environments, either in combination and along with Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), or as a replacement for HDFS, this Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 technology preview enables faster file access and opens up data within Hadoop deployments to other file-based or object-based applications. Also available only in Technology Preview is a management console for Red Hat Storage. Based on the oVirt Project – the open source infrastructure and virtualization management platform – the Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 management console technology preview gives users visibility and control into their storage clusters via a single pane of glass.

Red Hat Storage Server 2.0 is available immediately, and launches with an industry-leading ecosystem, giving users access to a broad selection of storage services.

To learn more about this announcement, join Red Hat for a press conference that will be broadcast live from Red Hat Summit in Boston at 1:00 p.m. ET on June 27, 2012. The webcast will also be available for replay. To join, visit https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!10100&ShowKey=9438.

Supporting Quotes
Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager, Storage, Red Hat
“After several months of successful beta testing at leading companies around the world, coupled with the progress we’ve made since we entered the scale-out storage market last fall when Red Hat acquired Gluster, we’re excited to remove the beta label and offer Red Hat Storage Server to the market. In the coming years, open source storage solutions and volume x86 servers are expected to transform the storage market in the same way that Linux and volume x86 servers transformed the server market, and with Red Hat Storage we’re positioning ourselves to be at the very forefront of this industry transformation.”

James VanEe, IT director, Institute for Biotechnology and Life Science Technologies, Cornell University
“The Cornell Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) uses Red Hat Storage to support our Institute of of Biotechnology and Life Science Technologies, which needed a storage platform robust enough to handle data produced by Genomics, Proteomics and Imaging technologies. With Red Hat Storage, we have gained a highly scalable and reliable storage solution that has allowed us to adapt to our growing IT needs while remaining cost-effective.”

Hideto Kamio, manager, Information Systems Div., System Infrastructure Management Dept., IT Platform Dept. at SOFTBANK TELECOM Corp.
"With a variety of choices for large distributed file systems on commoditized x86 servers, we value Red Hat Storage highly because it reduces the complexity of our infrastructure by delivering availability, stability and ease of implementation and operation. There is a need for scalable storage infrastructures for use in public clouds, on-premise and hybrid clouds. We strongly believe Red Hat Storage will be an excellent fit for enterprise-class use cases, similar to other Red Hat products.”

Terri McClure, senior storage analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
“Red Hat is helping to pave the way for a fundamental change in the way storage is sold and consumed. With software-based, scale-out unified file and object storage, deployable on-premise or in the public cloud, supporting unstructured and semi-structured big data, Red Hat customers are now able to standardize on a scalable storage infrastructure that supports a broad range of application and user information accessibly requirements.”

Stan Zaffos, vice president and research director, Storage, Gartner
“Users desperate to contain storage costs while satisfying an ever-expanding need for big data and archive storage are ready to embrace solutions that deliver commodity economics without sacrificing availability or performance. Scale-out storage built using professionally supported open source storage software running on x86 servers configured with direct attached storage components offer both low cost and high product attractiveness.”

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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.

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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; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; 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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  • 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.