NetApp Contributes to OpenStack Block Storage

NetApp, Inc. announced the contribution of Data ONTAP 8 Clustering Drivers to OpenStack Block Storage, giving developers, service providers, and enterprises improved resources to build private and public clouds on OpenStack.

Organizations can now scale while preserving performance and non-disruptive operations. They can use a combination of automated provisioning and data protection as well as storage efficiency to optimize their clouds.

NetApp presented these capabilities at the OpenStack Summit, October 15-18. The company also showcased proposed enhancements that provide NAS support as well as cloning for efficient provisioning of boot volumes.

OpenStack Folsom, the latest version of the open source cloud OS, automates the creation of pools of compute, storage, and networking resources. The addition of drivers for Data ONTAP 8 Clustering enables organizations to automate management of NetApp storage pools, or clusters, to scale the cloud infrastructure while maintaining performance and non-disruptive operations. Users also have access to storage efficiency capabilities such as deduplication and snapshot copies, and data protection features such as self-healing storage and integrated backup and DR.

Together these capabilities allow users to build OpenStack-based clouds that conserve storage and administrative resources, virtually eliminate downtime, and deliver performance while scaling the infrastructure. Integrated data protection features also reduce risk for OpenStack cloud deployments.

"As a charter member of the foundation and an active contributor, NetApp is committed to the OpenStack community," said Jeffrey O’Neal, senior director, Solutions Incubation, NetApp. "Our goal is to help organizations of all sizes use cloud-proven data management with their OpenStack cloud. NetApp will continue to provide resources to expand the capabilities of public and private clouds built on OpenStack, driving efficiency and reducing risk."

NetApp has been a contributing member of the OpenStack community since 2011. The company has a commitment to cloud standards and giving developers and users access to cloud-proven storage and data management.

Earlier this year, NetApp became the first major storage company to include support for the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), an open standard that specifies a protocol for self-provisioning, administering, and accessing cloud storage. The standard is implemented for OpenStack object storage through available add-on packages.

"OpenStack is becoming the open source standard for cloud computing environments," said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation. "As a charter member and contributor, NetApp is working to make open source solutions more accessible and available to enterprise organizations. OpenStack’s pluggable architecture and the backing of companies like NetApp enable OpenStack users to choose the best technologies to fit their business needs."

Today’s contributions enable organizations
using OpenStack with NetApp to: