In the open source world, you know your software project is a success when users start asking for less frequent releases with more predictable support cycles. It’s a sign your product has matured and is ready for prime-time production use. And that’s the point Ceph, the open source distributed storage platform, seems to have hit, with the introduction of longterm support from Inktank.
Inktank, which sells commercial support for the Ceph distributed storage system, has already established some significant partnerships in the open source channel during its brief history. Now it has added SUSE to that list with the announcement of an agreement to provide enterprise Ceph support for SUSE Cloud.
The importance of Ceph — the open source, massively scalable distributed storage system — to commercial solutions for cloud computing and Big Data has become yet clearer with the announcement of a partnership between Inktank and Citrix to integrate Ceph into the latter company’s CloudPlatform system.
Canonical founder, Mark Shuttleworth, has invested $1,000,000 dollars (€782,000) in Inktank, the only company that provides enterprise-level support for Ceph Distributed Storage System.
Ceph is a solution that combines object storage, block storage, and a POSIX-compatible file system in one unified platform that runs on commodity hardware.
Close on the heels of a recent agreement with Citrix, the Big Data and storage company Inktank continues to expand its partner network. Its latest deals, with Metacloud and Canonical, promise to enhance its importance in the open source channel as demand for Big Data solutions continues to explode.
As we’ve noted previously, Inktank is a relatively new endeavor.
Inktank has raised $1 million in the form of a convertible note from Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth to further services play for Ceph — an open source, next generation distributed storage technology.
Inktank is led by Dreamhost Co-Founder Sage Weil, who formed the company after developing Ceph over the past several years, starting with his work at the University of Caliornia at Santa Cr
Mark Shuttleworth's $1 million investment in open source cloud storage company InkTank leads the open cloud headlines this week.
Mark Shuttleworth — the entrepreneur and space tourist most famous for helping to launch Ubuntu Linux — found a new pet project on Tuesday, when he invested $1 million of his own funds in Inktank and the Ceph community. The endeavor may not involve blasting into orbit, but it’s likely to make some big splashes all the same in the open source and Big Data channels.
Inktank and SUSE are partnering to provide enterprise-grade support for the Ceph Distributed Storage System as part of SUSE Cloud.
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