Red Hat ups ante on storage security
Red Hat ups ante on storage security
Red Hat has released its open source storage file system based on Linux to make servers more secure in avoiding downtime and the creation of unnecessary redundant copies.
The Red Hat Global File System, which has been made available under the General Public Licence, used to be open source software before Sistina Software made it proprietary in 2001.
Red Hat purchased Sistina Software last December and will release the cluster file system as essentially the same product, but with new features.
It will allow Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers to move files to one shared system under a SAN which prevents the creation of redundant copies.
It also does not have one failure point, so when a server, network or storage system goes down, others work towards avoiding system downtime.
It is used to speed data access and replicate information so this can still be retrieved when individual machines stop working.
The Red Hat Global File System is programmed to operate with Oracle's 9i RAC, database software that has the ability to spread across multiple clustered machines and work with Red Hat's cluster software for ensuring services are always available, even when problems arise with computers.
Web and email workloads can also be managed easily by GFS.
The system is being released at a time when compliance regulations demand that businesses back up and archive files for years.
Other vendors have also offered clustered file systems recently. Hewlett-Packard's StorageWorks Scalable File Share product is a server that oversees a single clustered file system distributed across a large number of servers and storage systems. It employs open-source Lustre project for high-performance computing tasks.
Related Article: