Sun Open Storage is an open source computer data storage platform developed by Sun Microsystems. Based on industry-standard hardware and open source technologies from Sun Microsystems, Sun Open Storage offers an open storage architecture without vendor lock-in.
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In 2006, under the direction of then CEO Jonathan I. Schwartz, Sun began releasing many of their software product technologies as open source. This was seen by many as a way to compete with the rise of competing open source platforms, primarily Linux.
The move to create storage products based on software personalities, running on standard hardware are also part of a broader move within the system and storage industries. Companies including Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp and numerous smaller vendors all have been moving towards storage products based upon standard server hardware and customized software.
Sun's Open Storage products are a combination of their server technologies and customized software. Many of the features of these products reside within the core Solaris. Additional storage specific features have been added to create a complete integrated product. Core features provided by Solaris include the operating environment, the ZFS file-system, an analytics tool based on Dtrace, the NFS and CIFS protocol interfaces and other core features.
Statements by Sun around their Open Storage products indicated that products based on common hardware and open source Solaris, would remove vendor lock-in for customers.(need source)
Sun believes that open storage products and related services will gain 12 percent of the storage market by 2011.[1] Storage solutions from other vendors are closed systems, in which all the components must come from the vendor.
At the storage protocol layer, OpenSolaris offers support for SCSI, iSCSI, iSNS, Fibre Channel, FCoE, InfiniBand, RDMA, Object storage device, and SAS.
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