Eucalyptus Private Cloud Software Integrated With SAN

Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., creators of an open source private cloud platform, launched the SAN Adapter for Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (Eucalyptus EE), which enables customers to connect a Eucalyptus cloud directly to a high-performance Storage Area Network (SAN). With the SAN adapter, Eucalyptus EE delivers significantly increased IO (input/output) performance and scalability, allowing for much larger-scale clouds.

Storage is a critical component of cloud computing, and SANs have proven to be very robust and durable, especially in production environments. Eucalyptus users can now take advantage of the performance and reliability of SAN devices for critical data and service many more. Eucalyptus cloud users efficiently. This product is a great example of the continuing development and evolution of the open source Eucalyptus software.

CIOs should start evaluating and plan to use the new-generation object-based storage to manage unstructured data in 2010 within their private cloud.

"Storage is a critical component of cloud computing, and SANs have proven to be very robust and durable, especially in production environments," said Rich Wolski, Eucalyptus Systems CTO. "Eucalyptus users can now take advantage of the performance and reliability of SAN devices for critical data and service many more Eucalyptus cloud users efficiently. This product is a great example of the continuing development and evolution of the open source Eucalyptus software."

The SAN adapter provides a Eucalyptus cloud with more reliable and responsive access to network-attached storage volumes. It enables direct access to existing SAN storage devices via iSCSI, allowing Eucalyptus-managed virtual machine instances to connect directly to the SAN. In addition, the SAN product also provides support for JBOD storage.

The SAN adapter integrates into an existing Eucalyptus implementation and delivers benefits such as increased overall cloud I/O performance, block storage volume and snapshot performance, while preserving the reliability profile of the underlying SAN. It eliminates the need for data to flow through the Eucalyptus storage controller and enables cloud scaling to larger groups of users.

A recent Gartner, Inc. research report* addresses storage strategies for private cloud data, including a recommendation that, "CIOs should start evaluating and plan to use the new-generation object-based storage to manage unstructured data in 2010 within their private cloud."

* Gartner, Inc. research report titled, Predicts 2010: New Technologies and Service Delivery Models Will Transform the Storage Markets, by John Monroe, Pushan Rinnen, Sheila Childs, Adam W. Couture, Valdis Filks, Stanley Zaffos, published on December 14, 2009.