Software-defined storage can deliver the promise of OpenStack Manila

This week at OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, Red Hat announced integrated OpenStack Manila shared file system services with Red Hat Gluster Storage to provide enterprises with a scale-out file system for OpenStack clouds.

This news is extremely relevant to enterprises that need a scale out shared file service for their private cloud deployments. Before the Manila file share service, there was no elegant way to handle file shares in OpenStack. The integration with OpenStack Manila allows Red Hat Gluster Storage to serve as a storage back end for Manila, giving users a way to take advantage of file-based storage services in an OpenStack environment. In addition, it takes away much of the housekeeping chores from OpenStack users who can now request a file share, use it as long as needed and place it back into the storage pool, without ever caring about who first created the file or where exactly it’s stored.

Given the sheer volume of critical applications that read and write to file systems, we view file service in the private cloud is a “need to have,” not a “nice to have.” We could call these critical applications ‘“legacy applications,” but we’d more accurately call them “current business applications.” IT planners understand that, with file-based application workloads entrenched in their enterprises, many of these applications will never evolve to object storage I/O models.

A new frontier demands a new solution

As enterprises move forward with their private-cloud deployment plans, they are looking broadly at their datacenter infrastructure. In particular, they are focusing on storage models that will help future-proof operations - that is, provide the capabilities enterprises need to grow and adapt nimbly, automatically, and cost-effectively in the cloud.

Enterprises exploring next-generation datacenter models often cite TCO reduction as one of their main drivers. They also often cite operational agility and a relationship with a trusted, seasoned partner that can help guide them on their journey to the cloud and, ideally, provide solutions and support across multiple levels of the IT stack.

With its ability to scale massively yet perform agilely in the cloud, minimize acquisition and elasticity barriers, and lower the total cost of ownership (TCO), software-defined storage is a compelling option for enterprises’ flexible, new, next-generation datacenters.

Enter the software-defined Red Hat Gluster Storage - an open source solution that addresses the storage requirements of enterprises in the cloud: cost-effectiveness and massive scalability, and flexibility. As a backend for the OpenStack Manila file share service, it delivers scale-out, software-defined file storage for OpenStack clouds. Check out this demo on using Red Hat Gluster Storage as a backend for Manila.

Red Hat has been an open source champion for years and came in on the ground floor of Manila as the project’s initial software-defined storage member. As a member of the Red Hat Storage portfolio, Red Hat Gluster Storage is backed by Red Hat, a company that understands that the future of storage  - like the rest of the datacenter - will be largely software defined.

Driven by enterprise interest in OpenStack - and burgeoning business in the cloud – we predict that software-defined storage like Red Hat Gluster Storage will play a key role in the future of the next-generation datacenter.

And there’s more to come.

In the next installment, we’ll take a closer look at use cases for Red Hat Gluster Storage and Manila and integration with other OpenStack services.