Nexenta Gives Open-Source Storage A Virtual Twist

Company:

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Technology Sector: Storage

Key Product: NexentaStor 2.2

Year Founded: 2005

Number of Channel Partners: About 100 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-Focused Solution Provider

Why You Should Care: Nexenta allows solution providers to configure high-capacity, scalable and low-cost storage infrastructures using open-source software and either virtual appliances or industry-standard hardware.

The Lowdown: Nexenta provides software that lets customers and solution providers configure physical and virtual open storage appliances based on the open-source ZFS file system.

The company's focus on open-source storage should be no surprise, given its pedigree. Nexenta was founded in 2005 by the same people who wrote the original iSCSI stack, said CEO Evan Powell. They were also the first to create open storage on Linux when Sun Microsystems sent ZFS, which it developed, to open source.

The company's NexentaStor software, which was released in early 2008, can be implemented on industry-standard servers or on virtual appliances to configure high-performance, enterprise-class storage, Powell said.

"We sell it as an open-source software, which eliminates vendor lock-in," he said.

Nexenta builds on the ZFS file system with its own user interface, search capabilities and the ability to do an unlimited number of data snapshots and clones for point-in-time recovery.

NexentaStor also lets storage administrators view and manage their physical and virtual storage environments, and lets them set policies for virtual servers configured with VMware, Citrix and Microsoft Hyper-V technologies, Powell said.

The company in November unveiled a new version, NexentaStor 2.2, which now allows an unlimited number of virtual servers to be created from a single template with just a few clicks to quickly expand capacity as needed.

Also included in NexentaStor 2.2 is open virus scanning without the need for separate software, and native integration for Oracle and MySQL databases. Deduplication capabilities are expected to be added shortly, Powell said.

About 75 percent of Nexenta's revenue comes from a worldwide network of about 100 partners.