Red Hat SDS Solutions: Product Overview and Insight

See the full list of top SDS vendors

Bottom Line

Red Hat’s two software-defined storage (SDS) products — Gluster and Ceph — can be a good fit for large enterprises that run other Red Hat supported software, particularly OpenStack.

Red Hat, of course, is the standard bearer in the IT industry for open source software. Because Red Hat’s SDS solutions run on industry-standard hardware – instead of expensive, proprietary hardware – these open source options can be less expensive than integrated appliances. This cost savings is a big part of the appeal of Red Hat’s SDS offering.

Additionally, Red Hat’s SDS portfolio benefits from two other factors: Red Hat has deep roots in enterprise IT, so it knows the pain points it’s addressing with its SDS solutions. And Red Hat has a clear commitment to customer service, given its subscription model, which calls for great customer focus.

There are two versions of the Red Hat SDS product. Gluster Storage is designed for file storage. Ceph Storage performs unified block, object and file storage, so it’s a more versatile solution (see chart below for more details).

Product Description

Red Hat offers two different SDS solutions, and both are available with open source licenses.

1. Ceph Storage unifies block, object and file storage into a single platform. It is tightly integrated with the Red Hat OpenStack cloud computing platform, and it promises low costs and massive scalability. It runs on any industry-standard hardware.
2. Gluster offers file storage and promises fast performance for use cases like backup, archive, analytics and virtualization. Extremely flexible, it can run in bare metal, virtual, container or cloud environments.

Type of product:

Software-only

Editions available:

Ceph and Gluster come in free and commercially supported versions.

License:

Open source (LGPL 2.1, GPL 2 and LGPL 3).

Key features:

Ceph Storage

• unified block, object and file storage
• open source licensing
• flexible storage policies
• data durability via erasure coding or replication
• advanced monitoring and diagnostics
• multisite and disaster recovery options
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux included
• SLA-backed technical support
• compatibility with Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift and NFS

Gluster Storage

• file storage
• fast deployment
• automatic storage tiering
• open source licensing
• agile storage capacity
• easy management
• no vendor lock-in

Target Industries

Financial services, government, healthcare, telecommunications.

Customers

Red Hat says that more than 90 percent of the companies on the Fortune 500 use its products. Storage customers include Elo, Duke Health, Lufthansa Technik, CargoSmart, LDDC, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Brinker International, MyRepublic, Massachusetts Open Cloud, Rackspace, British Columbia, Macquarie Bank, CLIMB, Cox Automotive, FICO and Intuit.

Pricing and How to Buy

The open source software is available to download for free. Supported versions are available through Red Hat or third-party partners.

Red Hat Ceph Storage Features Chart

Red Hat Gluster Storage Features Chart