Inktank updates enterprise product

Inktank, the company delivering Ceph – the massively scalable, open source, software-defined storage system – has announced a release upgrade to Inktank Ceph Enterprise. The newly launched 1.1 version of the product offers new features for Calamari graphical manager, and this release is now certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

Inktank Ceph Enterprise™ is a product combining the most stable version of Ceph for object and block storage with a graphical manager, enhanced integration tools, and support services. Version 1.1 is the first update since Inktank Ceph Enterprise launched in October 2013.

Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.1 is now certified to work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. This certification makes Inktank’s transformative, web-scale storage technology accessible to the growing number of businesses relying on open source products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and exploring OpenStack. Red Hat’s Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), the commercial hypervisor product, is now also supported by Inktank.

“Broad, certified ecosystems are critical for enterprise adoption of any technology, and at Red Hat, we also believe these ecosystems are essential because they enable customer choice,” said Mike Werner, senior director, Global Technology Partner Programs, Red Hat. “We’re pleased to add Inktank’s newest release as a certified part of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform ecosystem, which gives our mutual customers confidence that our solutions work well together.”

With a fast release cycle, Inktank Ceph Enterprise allows organizations to effectively manage their rapidly growing data while benefiting from radical and continual improvements in the economics of data storage. Updates in this release include:
· Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform certification – Inktank Ceph Enterprise v1.1 is now certified as a storage backend for RHEL-OSP 4.0.
· Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization support – RHEV 3.3 is now officially supported by Inktank as a hypervisor platform for Ceph’s RADOS Block Device.
· Calamari v1.1 – The Calamari graphical manager is being upgraded to v1.1, which features IOPS information, an improved dashboard and better graphing support. Calamari is an on-premise application with management tools and performance data that simplifies operational management and enables administrators to adapt to changes in their Ceph clusters.
· Open Source Ceph v0.67.5 – Ceph is getting a minor upgrade to 0.67.5, which includes some backported fixes from the “Emperor” version of Ceph.
Inktank Ceph Enterprise’s storage technology enables enterprises to become cost-efficient and cloud-ready by offering full integrations with OpenStack, Apache CloudStack and common hypervisors, access to modern management tools, and the ability to consolidate storage infrastructure. Priced to future-proof their storage infrastructure, enterprises can start with block storage and grow into object storage or vice versa, depending on their needs.

“Enterprises are quickly adopting transformational, open source technologies backed by companies like Red Hat and Inktank to meet their quickly evolving IT infrastructure needs,” said Bryan Bogensberger, CEO of Inktank. “Inktank is excited about being part of the RHEL ecosystem and being certified to bring enterprise-grade, software-defined storage to the RHEL customer base.”

In response to growing demand for education on becoming a Ceph expert, Inktank has also announced the launch of Inktank University, a practical training program designed to meet the education needs of Inktank customers and the Ceph community. The courses, offered both virtually and in-person, allow anyone to learn the implementation, operation and maintenance of Ceph systems in an instructor-led classroom setting.