New developer tools and expanded professional service capabilities were introduced this week for Sun's open storage platform.

Tools

The tools are comprised of videos and accompanying online how-to guides to assist developers in building storage systems quickly and efficiently.

"With the set of tools on our Website customers can quickly download the open-source operating system and through a series of commands and scripts, get a NAS server up and running on the network," said Sun's senior director of storage servers and appliances, Graham Lovell, reported InfoStor's Kevin Komiega.

Sun offered up two how-to recipes:

• Build a OpenSolaris operating system storage server in 10 minutes or less: this how-to recipe is intended to familiarize developers with the simple commands in Solaris for performing data management tasks, i.e. ZFS, NFS, CIFS, COMSTAR.

• Simple Steps to building a network-attached storage (NAS) appliance: this how-to recipe describes the steps required to build a NAS device with OpenSolaris operating system quickly and easily. An accompanying video presentation is also available on Jeff Cheeney\'s weblog.

Services

To help customers speed open storage application development and make the transition to an open storage infrastructure, Sun\'s Open Storage services portfolio was highlighted. There are a variety of services available, from architecture to management.

Sun's goal is to partner with customers interested in moving to open storage. "We have a set of services and advice to help users move down the path to open storage. When you're replacing a proprietary storage device there is going to be some data migration that has to happen," Lovell said, Komiega noted. "We provide those services to help them make open-source storage a viable solution for their business."

Sun's Open Storage Platform

By opening up the storage platform, Sun says it has given developers the ability to re-purpose and re-use hardware through the simple addition of new software.

"The storage industry is undergoing a radical transformation that parallels what servers went through a decade ago," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group, Sun. "Solaris OS, ZFS and the work of the OpenSolaris storage community provide rock-solid, enterprise class scalability and value, giving customers a low-cost way to leverage these open architectures without sacrificing quality or reliability."

The foundation for this industry shift has been provided by Sun through the creation of the OpenSolaris storage community. Existing products like the Sun Fire x4500 server "Thumper" system and the Solaris ZFS file system capabilities within the Solaris OS help customers reduce costs by up to 90 percent through the use of open source software on industry standard systems, the company claims.

Open Storage Webcast

To learn more about the latest developments of Sun's open storage platform, tune in to a Community Townhall webcast replay with Sun EVP of Systems John Fowler; Sun Fellow and CTO of Storage Jeff Bonwick, Chief Architect for ZFS and Group Manager in Solaris Marketing Matthew Baier; and Chief Architect and SVP of Systems Group Andy Bechtolsheim.

More Information

Find out how to participate and contribute code into a current OpenSolaris storage project at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/storage/developer/

Find out about the new storage features administrators are using in OpenSolaris at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/storage/administrator/

Get more general information on Sun Open Storage at http://www.sun.com/openstorage [...read more...]

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