EMC libStorage: Storage Provisioning Framework for Container Platforms

EMC Corporation announced libStorage, a vendor and platform-agnostic storage orchestration, model and API.

The first open source technology of its kind, libStorage elevates storage to a first-class and sustainable citizen within the container ecosystem by providing universal and portable storage capabilities for container and application platforms.

Driven by EMC {code}, libStorage is the latest project in a series of EMC contributions to the open source community designed to help solve challenges for open source users. In addition to multiple projects contributed through EMC {code}, the company has also dedicated development resources to open source communities and efforts such as Cloud Foundry and OpenStack.

Containers have been gaining attention as a valuable open source technology; however, each container platform is unique, and the technologies aren’t unified for users. Additionally, users need a seamless interface between storage and container platforms, as well as native interoperability. None of that has been easy until now.

One of the most critical challenges with container deployments is communication; while several container platforms may be running in an environment, each has its own language, requiring users to treat them as silos. libStorage provides centralized storage capabilities for a distributed, container-driven ecosystem, resulting in one storage language to speak with all container platforms and one common method of support. Using libStorage ensures that storage platforms no longer differentiate among containers, but provide choice and portability of applications across platforms.

Bringing storage platforms together to standardize storage has always been a challenge. The libStorage project represents an abstraction that is simple yet extensible for any storage platform. The firm believes libStorage represents an approach that will appeal to all parts of the open source and container ecosystem.

The company is bringing storage and container platforms together, minimizing the operational dependencies to bring storage to applications in containers. This enables compatible platforms to become immediately relevant in the open source and container platform world.

libStorage key features:

• An open source, platform-agnostic, storage provisioning orchestration framework, model and API

• Lightweight client package enables minimal dependencies to provide full-featured storage functionality to platforms

• Optionally enables storage platforms to embed libStorage, creating native application integration

libStorage is available on GitHub.

Josh Bernstein, VP, technology, EMC {code}, EMC, said: “The benefits of container technology are widely recognized and gaining ground all the time. That provides endless opportunity to optimize containers for IT’s most challenging use cases. Storage is a critical piece of any technology environment, and by focusing on storage within the context of open source, we’re able to offer users-and storage vendors-more functionality, choice and value from their container deployments.“

Tobias Knaup, co-founder and CTO, Mesosphere, Inc., said: “DC/OS users-from start-ups to large enterprises-love the portable container-operations experience our technology offers, and it’s only natural they would desire a portable storage experience as well. libStorage promises just this, ensuring users a consistent experience for stateful applications via persistent storage, whatever container format they’re running.“