Nexenta Systems

Last updated
Nexenta Systems, Inc.
Type Private
Industry Computer data storage
Computer software
Founded2005 (2005) [1]
FounderAlex Aizman
Dmitry Yusupov
Headquarters
San Jose, California
,
United States
Key people
 Tarkan Maner (CEO) [2]
Dmitry Yusupov (CTO)
Phil Underwood (COO) [3]
Products NexentaStor
NexentaCloud
NexentaEdge
NexentaFusion
Website nexenta.com

Nexenta by DDN, Inc., is a subsidiary of DataDirect Networks that markets computer software for data storage and backup, headquartered in San Jose, California. Nexenta develops the products NexentaStor, NexentaCloud, NexentaFusion, and NexentaEdge. [4] [5] It was founded as Nexenta Systems, Inc., in 2005.

Contents

History

Origins

In 2005, Nexenta was founded by Alex Aizman and Dmitry Yusupov, software developers and former executives at network vendor Silverback (later acquired by Brocade). [6] Aizman and Yusupov previously worked together as the authors of the open source iSCSI initiator software in the Linux kernel. [7]

The company was created to support the open source Nexenta OS project after Sun Microsystems released the bulk of its Solaris operating system under free software licenses as OpenSolaris. Nexenta OS was an operating system that integrated Sun's Solaris kernel and core technologies with applications from the popular Debian and Ubuntu operating systems. [8] [9]

Nexenta has been acquired by DataDirect Networks, it claims to aim for "a developer of high-performance storage for modern workloads including artificial intelligence and big data", [10] in May 2019. [11]

Data storage

The company's entry into the data storage included use at Stanford University in 2012 and 2013. [12] [13] The field had been dominated by companies such as EMC Corporation, DataDirect Networks and NetApp, who sold hardware storage appliances.

Nexenta intended to compete by creating a storage system that did not require specialized hardware. [14] [15] Instead of producing hardware, the company would provide software to run on lower-costing commodity computing hardware, a model later marketed as software defined storage. [16]

Partnerships and open source

Much of Nexenta's business comes from partners that provide hardware and services alongside Nexenta software. [1] [17] The company's software is pre-installed on storage systems from vendors including Supermicro, Cisco Systems and Dell.

Nexenta continued to contribute to free and open source software used in its products. When Oracle Corporation discontinued OpenSolaris in 2010, the company became a founding member of the illumos open source project that would replace it. [18]

Products

Nexenta's product NexentaStor is software for network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) services. [1] NexentaStor was derived from the Nexenta OS based on the illumos operating system. [19] [20] The software runs on commodity hardware and creates storage virtualization pools consisting of multiple hard disk drives and solid-state drives. Data can be organized in a flexible number of filesystems and block storage, and files can be accessed over the Network File System (NFS) and CIFS protocols, while block storage uses iSCSI or Fibre Channel protocols. [21] NexentaStor allows online snapshots to be taken of data and replicated to other systems. For high availability Nexenta uses RSF-1 cluster to build a HA storage.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oracle Solaris</span> Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems

Solaris is a proprietary Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in 2010, it was renamed Oracle Solaris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenSolaris</span> Open source operating system from Sun Microsystems based on Solaris

OpenSolaris is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the eponymous operating system software.

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Nexenta OS, officially known as the Nexenta Core Platform, is a discontinued computer operating system based on OpenSolaris and Ubuntu that runs on IA-32- and x86-64-based systems. It emerged in fall 2005, after Sun Microsystems started the OpenSolaris project in June of that year. Nexenta Systems, Inc. initiated the project and sponsored its development. Nexenta OS version 1.0 was released in February 2008.

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NexentaStor is an OpenSolaris or more recently Illumos distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system.

illumos Free software implementation of the Solaris kernel

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenZFS</span> Umbrella project that develops the ZFS filesystem as an open-source project

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Kovar, Joseph F. (2010-01-25). "Nexenta Gives Open-Source Storage a Virtual Twist". CRN. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  2. ↑ Mellor, Chris (2013-08-29). "Oh, a Wyse guy, eh? Why I oughta make you Nexenta's new CEO". The Register. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  3. ↑ Gomes, Kimberly (2013-11-16). "Hires and promotions, Nov. 17". SFGate. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  4. ↑ Samuels, Diana (2012-01-27). "Nexenta Systems the 'Suave shampoo' of storage triples workforce". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved 2013-11-22.
  5. ↑ "Nexenta adds object storage NexentaEdge and all-flash array NexentaStor".
  6. ↑ Schubarth, Cromwell (2013-02-27). "Nexenta's new, old CEOs agree change was needed for next stage". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  7. ↑ Michael, Sean (2005-07-25). "Open Source iSCSI Gains Traction". Enterprise Storage Forum. Retrieved 2013-12-05.
  8. ↑ Hill, Benjamin Mako; Burger, Corey; Jesse, Jonathan; Bacon, Jono (June 30, 2008). The Official Ubuntu Book (3rd ed.). United States: Prentice Hall. ISBN   978-0137136681.
  9. ↑ Brockmeier, Joe (2006-10-15). "Linux.com: Nexenta Combines OpenSolaris, GNU, and Ubuntu". Linux Today. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  10. ↑ Kovar, Joseph F. (2019-05-06). "DDN Acquires Nexenta, Aiming To Build 5G Infrastructure's Software-Defined Foundation". CRN. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  11. ↑ Michael Feldman (2019-05-09). "DDN ADDS NEXENTA TO EXPANDING STORAGE EMPIRE". NEXTPLATFORM. Retrieved 2019-05-09.
  12. ↑ Cohan, Peter (2012-02-16). "Nexenta Aims At EMC's Heart". Forbes. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  13. ↑ Joe Little. "Little Notes". Blog. Retrieved October 30, 2016.
  14. ↑ Phaneuf, Whitney (2012-08-14). "EMC and NetApp: This Startup Wants to Kill Your Closed Model for Storage". PandoDaily. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  15. ↑ Breeze, Hannah (2013-11-20). "'Jedi' Nexenta takes aim at EMC and NetApp Death Star". ChannelWeb. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  16. ↑ Vellente, Dave (2013-05-29). "Software-Defined Netapp - Always Makes The Right Moves When They Count And Its Software Defined Storage (SDS)". Forbes. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  17. ↑ Mellor, Chris (2011-03-04). "Nexenta: the fasting growing storage start-up ever?". The Register. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  18. ↑ Vervloesem, Koen (2011-06-02). "Illumos: the successor to the OpenSolaris community". LWN.net. Retrieved 2013-12-05.
  19. ↑ Vervloesem, Koen (2009-05-27). "Nexenta Core Platform 2: OpenSolaris for human beings". LWN.net. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  20. ↑ Breitbach, Matt (2010-10-05). "ZFS - Building, Testing, and Benchmarking". AnandTech. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
  21. ↑ Broeken, Marco (2012-06-24). "Building superfast whitebox storage with Nexenta CE". vClouds. Retrieved 2013-12-13.
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