New Company Launched by Ceph: Inktank

The developers behind the open source, massively scalable distributed storage system called Ceph announced the launch of a new company, Inktank.

The first company to offer enterprise-level support for Ceph, Inktank is dedicated to helping enterprises leverage Ceph to transform and scale their storage infrastructure.

Ceph is a self-managing, highly scalable, open source distributed storage system that delivers object storage, block storage, and POSIX-compatible file storage in one unified platform that runs on commodity hardware.

Inktank provides enterprise-grade consulting and support services that help companies efficiently implement and operate the Ceph distributed storage system. It launches with a core team of Ceph experts to guide the continued transformation of Ceph’s storage platform and galvanize its worldwide developer community. Leveraging the Inktank team’s expertise, enterprises can modernize their storage capabilities and lower IT infrastructure costs by deploying and managing Ceph’s free, robust, easy-to-administer, and easy-to-scale system.

Inktank’s Sage Weil originally created the Ceph open-source project for his doctoral dissertation at UC Santa Cruz in 2004. Since then, Ceph has developed into a storage platform that tackles enterprises’ biggest storage challenges in the era of cloud computing and big data. Ceph has been in the Linux kernel for over two years and is integrated into the OpenStack project.

"Since Ceph’s creation eight years ago, more and more companies have been expressing interest in its ability to transform storage and free companies from the restrictions of expensive, proprietary systems. However, the lack of professional support for Ceph made it difficult for some enterprises to make the leap – until now," said Bryan Bogensberger, president and COO of Inktank. "With Inktank’s Ceph experts providing enterprise-level consulting and support services, even the most demanding companies can adopt Ceph with the confidence that they have the professional support they need every step of the way."

"We were an early adopter of Ceph. We chose it as the block storage device for our OpenStack-based Piston Enterprise OS product, but because there was limited support we had to do the heavy lifting to get it fully integrated," said Joshua McKenty, CEO and co-founder at Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. "With the launch of Inktank, I am confident that other companies like us will derive significant benefit from formalized support and services that can help them leverage the full power of Ceph."

"Ceph is more than just an open-source project; it’s a vibrant, global community of developers working together to solve one of the biggest problems in computing today: truly scalable storage," said Sage Weil, chief architect and CEO at Inktank. "With the launch of Inktank, the worldwide Ceph community has the resources of an independent company and passionate, talented community at its back to transform and efficiently manage their storage infrastructure."

Inktank is currently hiring.