Gluster VMStor

Gluster announced VMStor, a new capability of Gluster storage which simplifies scalable NAS for virtual machine (VM) storage.

Initially supporting VMware, the new VMStor capability significantly decreases the expense associated with storing VMs by eliminating the requirement to use a traditional storage area network (SAN) based environment which can be expensive to scale. Gluster VMStor scales to multiple petabytes and can store an unlimited number of VM images. Key capabilities such as VM-level snapshots and backup can be performed with a single mouse click or automated with existing tools and cloud management software. Gluster will be demonstrating VMStor at VMworld 2010, taking place August 30 – September 2 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

"The adoption of server virtualization continues to increase in momentum. Until recently, storage lagged behind reducing the gains of virtualization," said Noemi Greyzdorf, Research Manager, IDC. "The demand for storage capacity will continue to increase as data continues to grow exponentially. Together with virtualization, these trends are making the effective management of storage critical. Gluster’s VMStor is an easy-to-use, cost-effective storage solution that can support the growth of data and the demands of virtualized environments. It can scale out as needed to accommodate fluctuating performance and capacity demands."

VMStor benefits include:

• Integrated with VMware user interface (UI): VMStor integrates seamlessly with the VMware user interface, no new tools or custom interfaces are required.
• VM-level snapshots: Snapshots are performed at the individual VM level for fine grained control. Snapshots are easily automated and also be controlled through a cloud management software stack. Snapshot operations are performed by Gluster on the storage server, freeing up CPU cycles on VMware ESX machines. Restoring a VM to a prior state is performed by simply copying the desired snapshot to the VM folder and restarting the virtual machine.
• Simple backup: Backup operations can be performed with one mouse click protecting your data in a remote location or in the cloud.
• Familiar file system architecture: VMStor supports standard NFS, requiring no specialized training and making it simple and easy to use.

"Within our customer deployments and open source community we are seeing a demand for effective storage solutions for virtualized and cloud computing environments," said Ben Golub, CEO of Gluster. "VMStor fills this void by responding to the needs of today’s storage for virtual machines to ensure the reliability and scalability as the entire data center becomes virtualized."

About Gluster Storage Platform
Gluster Storage Platform enables enterprises to seamlessly scale to multiple petabytes in a single volume across multiple storage servers. The global namespace provides a single mount-point that thousands of virtual machines can share, eliminating the need to provision individual LUN connections as is required with SAN architectures. With its ‘no-metadata server’ architecture, Gluster provides the only commercial storage platform that removes this common source of I/O bottlenecks. This approach provides true parallel data access, ensures linear scalability and eliminates the risk of metadata server failure or corruption. Additionally, Gluster Storage Platform provides a cost-effective, open source software solution that runs on commodity hardware to meet enterprise requirements for data availability, ease of management and scalability.

Product Availability
VMStor is offered as part of the Gluster Storage Platform and is now available for beta testing.