Red Hat Launches Open Source Software-Defined Storage Products

Red Hat is updating its storage portfolio with two new products designed for robust data protection, performance and management at scale. Red Hat Ceph Storage 1.3 and Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.1 are open source software-defined storage solutions that run on commodity hardware, have programmable architectures and can handle various enterprise workloads.

Red Hat Ceph Storage 1.3

Suitable for powering infrastructure platforms, Red Hat Ceph Storage has a "highly tunable, extensible and configurable architecture that offers mature interfaces for enterprise block and object storage," according to the company. Typical uses include archival and rich media and cloud infrastructure workloads such as OpenStack. Its new features and enhancements:

  • For robustness at scale, improved rebalancing logic prioritizes data integrity over other automatic functions, and a new rebalancing "pause" feature reduces impact on performance during cluster changes. Time-scheduled scrubbing prevents automatic administrative checks from occurring during peak hours and affecting performance, and sharding of S3 bucket metadata enables bucket operation load balancing across a cluster.
  • For enhanced performance: input/output operations per second (IOPS) and latency optimizations for Ceph running on flash storage devices (contributed by Intel and SanDisk technology); acceleration of virtual machine boot times using read ahead caching; and sustained block performance by limiting file system fragmentation.
  • For operational efficiency: a lightweight, embedded Civetweb server to ease deployment of the Ceph Object Gateway; faster execution of administrative actions on block devices, such as resizing, deleting or exporting, even with extremely large images; management support for multiple users and clusters via the Ceph UI and API; and API-based policy management that enables programmatic adjustment of failure domains and data placement.

Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.1

Red Hat Gluster Storage is a scale-out file store with a straightforward architecture designed for public, private and hybrid cloud environments. Offering mature network file system (NFS), Server Message Block (SMB), and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) file interfaces, Red Hat Gluster Storage can handle enterprise virtualization, analytics, sync and share, and rich media workloads, according to the company. New features include:

  • Support for erasure-coded dispersed storage volumes that reconstruct corrupted or lost data by using information about the data stored elsewhere in the system (reducing the need for RAID and replication).
  • Tiering — automated movement of data between "hot" and "cold" tiers in a volume-based on-access frequency — gives operators fine-grain control to deploy storage clusters that are both cost-effective and high-performance for a variety of workloads.
  • Bit-rot detection scans data periodically to detect data corruption resulting from silent failures in underlying storage media.
  • Support for SELinux in enforcing mode and SSL-based network encryption to increase security across the deployment; support for active NFSv4, based on the NFS-Ganesha project, to provide performant and secure data access through clustered NFSv4 endpoints; and SMB 3 capabilities, adding protocol negotiation, copy-data offload and in-flight data encryption to allow for efficient file transfer and secure access in Microsoft Windows environments.

For more information, visit the Red Hat site.

About the Author

Rhea Kelly is editor in chief for Campus Technology, THE Journal, and Spaces4Learning. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • college students in a classroom focus on a silver laptop, with a neural network diagram on the monitor in the background

    Report: 93% of Students Believe Gen AI Training Belongs in Degree Programs

    The vast majority of today's college students — 93% — believe generative AI training should be included in degree programs, according to a recent Coursera report. What's more, 86% of students consider gen AI the most crucial technical skill for career preparation, prioritizing it above in-demand skills such as data strategy and software development.

  • university building with classical architecture is partially overlaid by a glowing digital brain graphic

    NSF Invests $100 Million in National AI Research Institutes

    The National Science Foundation has announced a $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, part of a broader White House strategy to maintain American leadership as competition with China intensifies.

  • cybersecurity book with a shield and padlock

    NIST Proposes New Cybersecurity Guidelines for AI Systems

    The National Institute of Standards and Technology has unveiled plans to issue a new set of cybersecurity guidelines aimed at safeguarding artificial intelligence systems, citing rising concerns over risks tied to generative models, predictive analytics, and autonomous agents.

  • school building connected by lines to symbols of AI, data charts, and a funding document with a dollar sign

    ED Issues Guidance on the Use of Federal Grant Funds to Support Learner Outcomes with AI

    In response to President Trump's April 23 Executive Order on advancing AI education, the United States Department of Education has issued new guidance on how K-12 and higher education institutions may use federal grant funds "to support improved outcomes for learners through the responsible integration of artificial intelligence."