Nexenta and OpenStack
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As the global leader in OpenStorage, Nexenta is a proud supporter of OpenStack, and open approaches to the cloud. Today, NexentaStor is used today by hundreds of cloud service providers delivering EC2 and cloud compute services including KT, nScaled, MorphLabs, Hosting.com, LeaseWeb, and many more.

See also: Caitlin Bestler's Presentation at The 2012 OpenStack Design Summit

Nexenta is a leading supporter of the OpenStack initiative, which is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing a ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

Data Sheet:
Nexenta Cloud Strategy: Unified Storage for Public or Private Cloud

OpenStack has two important parts. OpenStack Compute (code-named Project Nova) is open source software designed to provision and manage large networks of virtual machines, creating a redundant and scalable cloud computing platform. It gives users the software, control panels, and APIs required to orchestrate a cloud, including running instances, managing networks, and controlling access by users and projects.

OpenStack Object Storage (code-named Project Swift) is open source software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized servers to store petabytes of accessible data. It is not a file system or real-time data storage system intended to support collaboration on shared data sets, but rather a long-term storage system for a more permanent type of static data that can be retrieved, leveraged, and then updated if necessary. Primary examples of data that best fit this type of storage model are photo storage, email archive and other backup and archiving use cases.

Nexenta and OpenStack

Nexenta is contributing to, and investing in, OpenStack in the following areas:

  • The Volume Driver for Nexenta is a driver that integrates NexentaStor SAN services with Nova volume management.
  • The Local File System (LFS) patch for OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) allows offloading of replication responsibilities to local file systems with self-healing data protection capabilities, such as ZFS/NexentaStor.
    • Without LFS, the default Swift configuration calls for three copies of each Swift Volume to be created and maintained via network replication.
    • With LFS enabled, ZFS can reduce a single network replica by providing self-healing data protection on each server. Effectively, this 3x1 solution is replaced with a 2x2 solution, increasing data integrity and reducing network congestion.
  • Amazon S3 compatibility is added as well, including S3 ACLs support and versioning.

Nexenta supports openness in clouds, as well as storage, and is committed to enthusiastically supporting efforts to keep the leading cloud stacks inter-operable.