Gluster ramps up cloud storage

Storage software developer Gluster has issued the beta release of GlusterFS 3.3, the firm’s file system that lets IT users access the same data as an object and as a file in an effort to simplify management and lessen storage costs.

The aim of the platform is to accelerate cloud adoption for enterprises by making it easier for them to migrate legacy apps to the cloud by making storage more addressable, said Tom Trainer, director of product marketing for Gluster.

“Moving legacy apps to the cloud has been a challenge—it hasn’t been easy,” Trainer said. “You can’t do it easily with hardware, but you can do it with software.”

Enterprises can use GlusterFS to accelerate the process of preparing applications for the cloud, simplify new application development for cloud computing environments and backup from data center unified file and object to Amazon Web Services (AWS) or within the hp microsoft private cloud, Trainer said. “This allows for legacy apps to migrate into a storage environment much more easily,” he said.

Infrastructure service providers can use GlusterFS 3.3 to offer access to both file and object storage, Trainer said, and Gluster’s platform lets enterprises scale on-demand to petabytes of capacity.

GlusterFS 3.3 is available for on-premise configurations, virtual machines and in public and private cloud environments. The platform provides unified file and object storage technology, allowing users to access data as objects from an Amazon S3-compatible interface and access files from a network-attached storage (NAS) interface.

“This gives organizations the ability to transition off legacy apps at their own pace,” said John Kreisa, VP of marketing at Gluster. “Ninety-five percent of those applications are unable to easily migrate to the cloud—there’s a lot of it out there.”