Today, SwiftStack announces the general availability of its private cloud storage platform that leverages OpenStack’s Swift as its underlying storage technology. The solution delivers storage performance and scalability for private clouds that parallels that of public cloud offerings. Designed to run on commodity hardware, the solution is currently used primarily by organizations building applications within a private cloud environment as well as cloud service providers that use SwiftStack’s storage solution for their cloud offerings. SwiftStack’s software defined storage solution features two principal components: (1) Nodes that receive the storage configuration from the controller and adjust the platform in accord with authentication and load balancing changes; (2) A controller that manages and automates the configuration, scaling and error handling.
Developed by the team responsible for key contributions to OpenStack Swift, SwiftStack represents yet another commercialization of OpenStack’s offerings, this time in the form of a robust, object storage solution designed specifically for private clouds. Today’s announcement also signals the vibrancy of a contemporary revolution in storage technologies branded under the widely misunderstood rubric “software defined storage,” at least partially defined by the ability of the storage controller to “be provision-able via software orchestration” according to Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of Nutanix, another software defined storage vendor. Another key component of software defined storage is the abstraction of storage from hardware, and the capability of the controller to be virtually provisioned. Other vendors in the software defined storage space include Nexenta and EMC’s recent acquisition ScaleIO. As large enterprises struggle to catch up with advances in storage technology, the industry should expect to see more acquisitions of hot software defined storage vendors as the battle to deliver highly scalable, high performance, interoperable storage solutions evolves.
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