OSNEXUS Releases QuantaStor 5.5 Featuring Advanced IT Automation with Ansible Modules and New Dashboard Analytics

BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 29, 2020 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced the availability of QuantaStor 5.5 with new capabilities of IT automation through Ansible modules and a Python client library, and enhanced storage grid dashboard including server thermals and power supply health.

QuantaStor's new Storage Grid Dashboard with server thermals and power supply health.

"Our major focus has always been on streamlining storage management tasks and lowering complexity," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "With QuantaStor 5.5, we take IT automation to the next level with the inclusion of Ansible playbooks and a Python client library. These new interfaces enable operations teams to fully automate common storage management tasks with ease."

IT automation is especially important for companies today as technology advances and jobs become more specialized. With data storage, IT teams often need to master many different systems and automating common workflows is critical to reducing complexity and speeding up day-to-day business operations. With the Ansible and Python integration modules, IT organizations have powerful new tools that complement QuantaStor's existing REST API and CLI interfaces.

QuantaStor 5.5 Highlights

Ansible Modules - Enables users to quickly and easily set up playbooks to automate the provisioning of file, block, and object storage within QuantaStor storage grids; ideal for highly dynamic environments including managed service providers, continuous integration, and analytics.

Python Client Library - Simplifies the process of developing custom storage management portals and provisioning systems via the Python programming language. All of the published 640+ QuantaStor REST APIs as documented on the OSNEXUS wiki are callable via the Python client library available via 'pip install quantastor'.

Advanced Storage Grid Dashboard - Enhanced performance statistics with server identification thermals, power supply health, and overall system load at-a-glance.

OSNEXUS Announces QuantaStor 5.4 Featuring Scale-out NAS, IBM Key Protect Integration, and Storage Firewall Management

BELLEVUE, Wash., Aug. 27, 2019 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced the availability of QuantaStor 5.4 with new capabilities including CephFS based scale-out NAS, IBM Key Protect integration, and storage protocol firewall management.

"QuantaStor 5.4 represents a significant step forward with the new security features and scale-out NAS capabilities," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "Using Ceph technology for file, block, and object storage unifies our scale-out storage strategy and enables customers to get even higher ROI out of their scale-out storage deployments."

The QuantaStor Software-Defined Storage platform helps organizations reach new levels of IT agility by enabling standard servers to be set up as enterprise storage systems. To enable these systems to reach hyper-scale capacities, QuantaStor has a unique storage grid technology allowing the combination of up to 64x systems together into a "storage grid". Storage grid technology also enables deployment and management across public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid-cloud environments to meet the needs of a broad set of storage use cases.

QuantaStor 5.4 Highlights

Scale-out NAS with CephFS - QuantaStor now utilizes scale-out NAS capabilities based on CephFS. Scale-out configurations support NFS and SMB protocols with features including compression, encryption, and snapshots.

IBM Key Protect Integration - QuantaStor supports IBM Key Protect as a key management system for creating encrypted Storage Pools.

Storage Firewall Management - Updated firewall settings enable IT security administrators to easily control protocol access at a system and network interface level.

Enhanced Upgrade Manager - Simplified upgrade process makes it easy to apply driver and security updates to QuantaStor systems.

S3 Bucket Management - Common S3 bucket management operations are now accessible via the QuantaStor web management interface, CLI, and REST API.

OSNEXUS and Pogo Linux Announce New StorageDirector Q-Series Storage Appliance for Multimedia Streaming and Active Archive of Media Content

LOS ANGELES, July 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, and Pogo Linux, a leading provider of server and storage products, today announced the new StorageDirector Q-Series system that delivers a simplified and scalable content distribution and storage solution for media, entertainment and broadcast users.

OSNEXUS and Pogo Linux will demonstrate the new solution alongside syGlass, a scientific VR software provider, at SIGGRAPH 2019 happening July 30th to August 1st at the Los Angeles Convention Center at booth number 720.

The StorageDirector Q-Series combines the QuantaStor software-defined storage platform with Pogo-certified hardware to provide enhanced streaming and active archiving of digital content with enterprise-class availability and data services in a fully-integrated, high-capacity storage system. Additionally, the StorageDirector Q-Series storage solution provides industry-leading media processing capabilities while affording the operational agility and flexibility to handle unexpected media workflow demands.

The StorageDirector Q-Series benefits include:

• High-performance, flexible infrastructure that reduces costs and storage management times

• Addresses a broad range of demanding Media & Entertainment workloads when compared to legacy solutions

• Ability to scale up to 100PB, enabling organizations to hyper-scale as media files increase exponentially

• Supports video and audio formats such as 4k, 360 degree and 60 frame video

"There are a number of scalability challenges in broadcast and media storage that traditional storage platforms are unable to meet in a performant and cost-efficient manner," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "We are excited to build on our partnership with Pogo to deliver next-generation software-defined storage solutions that overcome these challenges while increasing IT agility."

"With the increased speed and capacity of the StorageDirector Q-Series, we believe this solution to be the first new storage system that meets the needs of modern media workloads," said Paul Bibaud, VP of Sales and Product Development at Pogo Linux. "Thanks to our relationship with syGlass, we're able to showcase this product to attendees for the first time and explain how the OSNEXUS and Pogo solution is the right combination of features for their video and audio needs."

OSNEXUS QuantaStor storage grid technology offers fast performance and high-capacity, ideal for addressing high-definition content streaming and active archiving, as well as digital asset management, high-speed editing, transcoding and rendering. QuantaStor enables IT organizations to deploy both scale-out and scale-up NAS storage cluster designs, providing the necessary tools to match the performance requirements and hardware design goals for media workflows.

OSNEXUS Certifies Intel Optane Memory with QuantaStor 5

BELLEVUE, Wash., July 9, 2019 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced that it has certified Intel Optane™ memory for use with its QuantaStor storage platform. Intel Optane SSDs complement QuantaStor scale-out clusters that use Ceph technology. Write performance with Ceph is highly dependent on the use of fast all-flash storage due to its highly resilient synchronous write architecture. With Optane and 3D XPoint technology, writes are completed faster than with standard NVMe media and the high write endurance of the Optane flash devices make them ideal for this application.

Intel Optane technology is a new, non-volatile storage option based on Intel 3D XPoint technology that modernizes the existing data center architecture with a new tier in the memory and storage hierarchy, filling the gap between high-performing volatile memory and lower-performing, but affordable, NAND storage. Intel Optane technology is unique in its combination of low latency, high quality of service, high endurance, and high throughput.

"With multi-cloud adoption becoming a core strategy for enterprises, cloud providers are adopting PCIe/NVMe-based SSDs like Intel Optane SSDs that deliver robust, long-lasting scalable performance," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "Intel Optane SSDs enable our storage grids to run scale-out clusters faster while simultaneously addressing some of the cost issues generally associated with scale-out storage clusters."

Delivering performance, quality of service, and capacity improvements to further optimize storage efficiency, Intel Optane technology enables data centers to do more per server, minimize service disruptions, and efficiently manage at scale than traditional NAND storage.

The OSNEXUS QuantaStor platform delivers a complete array of enterprise features and capabilities for file, block, and object storage. Additionally, it addresses a broad set of storage use cases including server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, and high-performance applications through scale-out physical and virtual storage appliances.

OSNEXUS has certified the Intel SSD DC P4610, Optane SSD DC P4800X, and SSD DC P4500 for use with QuantaStor 5.

OSNEXUS Announces QuantaStor Docker Volume Plugin

BELLEVUE, Wash., June 11, 2019 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced the new Docker-certified QuantaStor Docker Volume Plugin enabling persistent Docker containers and stateful volumes for containerized applications.

The Docker Volume Plugin for QuantaStor makes it easy to create and manage persistent Docker containers using Docker APIs and command line tools. The new plugin creates a one-to-one relationship between Docker Volumes and QuantaStor Storage Volumes so that container state may be replicated, snapshot, or restored just as with VMs. QuantaStor's Storage Grid technology makes the Docker provisioning system scale-out across sites and datacenters.

"The Docker Volume Plugin for QuantaStor greatly simplifies provisioning, deployment, and management of persistent Docker containers," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "Combined with our Storage Grid technology, Docker containers can now be provisioned from multiple systems in multiple datacenters via a single IP address or virtual hostname for a given grid."

The QuantaStor Docker Volume Plugin is certified by Docker and available from the Docker Hub, the world's largest library and community for container images.

To access the QuantaStor Docker plugin, click here.

OSNEXUS Announces QuantaStor 5 Featuring Configuration Analytics, Upgraded Scale-out Object Storage Capabilities, and Ansible Automation

BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 28, 2019 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced the availability of QuantaStor 5, a next-generation scalable storage management platform with new upgrades and integrations offering advanced automation, analytics, and hyperscale storage technology.

QuantaStor 5, featuring file, block, and object storage capabilities in one platform, was designed for petabyte-scale deployments or workload consolidation with its grid technology across local sites, global data centers, and cloud-based third-party storage providers. The release of QuantaStor 5 includes configuration and compliance analytics intelligence upgrades, workflow and workload automation with Ansible integration for simplified management, and system performance improvements.

"QuantaStor 5 takes us a leap forward with its configuration, performance, and security analysis capabilities. While SDS provides customers with great hardware and configuration flexibility, additional intelligence is required for compliance and configuration set up. QuantaStor 5 makes that a one-click process and furthers our mission of simplifying storage management at scale," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "The new features and capabilities in QuantaStor 5 will continue to help drive the adoption of software-defined storage technologies in the enterprise and simplify the adoption of hybrid-cloud strategies."

"Customers consolidating multiple siloed workloads onto a single, centrally managed platform while still meeting business requirements should consider OSNEXUS QuantaStor," said Eric Burgener, Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group at IDC. "The appeal of centralized management for security and automation, along with the economic benefits of web-scale SDS architectures, make this a strategy that can simplify administration and lower costs for most enterprises."

QuantaStor 5 Highlights

Configuration and Security Analytics - One-click analysis of network, security, and performance settings across all QuantaStor appliances in a given storage grid, making it easy to validate a storage configuration before production deployment.

Ansible Automation - With Ansible integration support, users can quickly and easily set up playbooks to automatically provision file, block, and object storage within QuantaStor storage grids for use cases including software development, testing, continuous integration, or analytics.

Advanced Server Monitoring - QuantaStor now monitors the server internals (temperature, fans, power supplies, CPU, firmware, etc.) for all major server models from Dell, HPE, Cisco, Intel, Supermicro, and Lenovo. Monitoring is tied into the QuantaStor call-home system so that administrators can more easily manage and monitor the hardware in distributed hybrid-cloud configurations.

Scale-out Object Storage Upgrades - Major performance boost (250 percent faster write performance) with integrated support for Ceph Luminos, plus automated pool, monitor, cluster, OSD, and journal configurations for simplified object-storage deployments.

NAS Gateway Upgrades - Performance boost with upgraded NAS gateways using high-speed back-end integrations for Microsoft Azure blob storage, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Object Storage, Ceph, Dropbox, and Backblaze.

HPE NV-DIMM Support - Added support for HPE's NV-DIMM technology for use in scale-out object and block storage configurations.

OSNEXUS Announces Storage Solution Design Web Apps for SDS

BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 31, 2019 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced the availability of QuantaStor Solution Design web apps for QuantaStor 5. The two new web applications enable customers, partners, and system architects to design optimal QuantaStor configurations for SAN/NAS and Object Storage clusters with ease.

QuantaStor has the broadest hardware support of any Software-Defined Storage platform on the market, with support for hardware from vendors including Dell, HPE, Cisco, Lenovo, Supermicro, Seagate, and Western Digital. The new QuantaStor Solution Design web apps make hardware selection, price estimation, and proper solution engineering accessible to a broad audience. Whether the design is for a small SAN/NAS configuration or a hyper-scale S3 object storage deployment, the tools greatly streamline the process and collaborative efforts between resellers and customers.

"Designing Software-Defined Storage solutions used to be a complex process due to the hardware flexibility that comes with SDS. With these new web apps, we've cleared the way for customers and partners to design and model solutions faster and more efficiently than ever," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "We're really pleased with all the feedback we've seen so far and will be enhancing the apps with new hardware and modeling features."

Solution Design Web Apps

The SAN/NAS Solution Design web app makes designing SAN/NAS storage clusters quick and easy. Clusters are designed around a two-node server model with attached SAS or NVMe storage chassis. As capacity is increased, the design tool automatically adds servers and storage chassis to meet the requested usable capacity. Customers and Sales Engineers simply move a slider bar to the required usable capacity, pick a use case, and all the calculations to determine the solution design are done for them automatically. Protocol coverage includes block (iSCSI/FC) and file (SMB3/NFS4) storage access.

Similarly, the Object Storage Solution Design web app provides this same ease of configuration and design for scale-out storage clusters. QuantaStor scale-out clusters support replica and erasure-coding based data protection. Protocol coverage includes block (iSCSI/FC/Ceph RBD), file (SMB/NFS/CephFS), and object storage (S3/SWIFT) access.

For more information on the QuantaStor Solution Design web apps, visit osnexus.com/design.

OSNEXUS Adds Multi-factor Authentication to QuantaStor SDS

BELLEVUE, Wash., Sept. 26, 2018 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of hyper-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced the integration of Multi-factor Authentication into the QuantaStor Software-Defined Storage platform.

Starting with the release of QuantaStor SDS v4.7 in October 2018, users will be able to use Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) in their storage grids with Duo Security as an additional security layer. Users may choose from multiple methods as a second factor of identity verification including SMS text message, push notification, or phone call. This second layer of authentication is in addition to the user's primary authentication check via username and password.

"Multi-factor Authentication is especially important for customers in industries with special security compliance requirements such as finance, healthcare, and government," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "With the integration of Duo Security into QuantaStor SDS, our customers now have an industry-leading Multi-factor Authentication option to further protect their QuantaStor storage grids."                

Duo Security helps defend organizations against data breaches by making security easy and effective. Duo Beyond, the company's category defining zero-trust security platform, enables organizations to provide trusted access to all of their critical applications, for any user, from anywhere, and with any device.

OSNEXUS Announces Secure Log Reporting for QuantaStor SDS

BELLEVUE, Wash., Aug. 2, 2018 – OSNEXUS, the leading developer of hyper-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced Secure Log Reporting for its QuantaStor SDS platform to ensure all user log data is scrubbed of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) before it leaves an organization for analysis.

QuantaStor’s new Secure Log Reporting feature complies with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that sets stringent rules on the processing of PII of EU users by individuals, companies, and organizations across the globe. To meet GDPR requirements, QuantaStor SDS now automatically scrubs names, emails, and other security related and Personally Identifiable Information from a given log collection before it is encrypted and sent to OSNEXUS for alerting, reporting, or auditing needs.

“Secure Log Reporting is an important part of GDPR compliance and gives QuantaStor users peace of mind that personally identifiable data in the system and other logs will be scrubbed from the log report before it is encrypted and sent to support engineering,” said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. “Security and compliance with standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and NIST 800-171 is core to our mission and the needs of our customers.”

Secure Log Reporting is one of many feature enhancements of QuantaStor SDS that ensure compliance to various government security regulations, others include Multi-factor Authentication, Role-based Access Controls, Audit Logging, and end-to-end encryption based on military grade AES 256-XTS. QuantaStor SDS currently complies with NIST, CJIS, and HIPAA in addition to GDPR. QuantaStor Log Reporting is always customer initiated and OSNEXUS keeps no customer data with PII. Logs collected before the GDPR compliance date of May 25th, 2018 have also been scrubbed to meet compliance requirements.

Existing customers running older versions of QuantaStor SDS must upgrade to v4.6 or newer to get the new secure log scrubbing feature which is enabled by default on all systems.

The OSNEXUS QuantaStor SDS platform delivers a complete array of enterprise features and capabilities for file, block, and object storage. Additionally, it addresses a broad set of storage use cases including server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, and high-performance applications through scale-out physical and virtual storage appliances.

OSNEXUS Announces Automated Storage Tiering for QuantaStor SDS

BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 29, 2018 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of hyper-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced Automated Storage Tiering for its QuantaStor SDS platform allowing IT Administrators to set automated Backup Policies that can move, archive and recover data across global storage grids which can span data centers and on-premises locations.

With QuantaStor SDS Automated Storage Tiering, IT Administrators can easily setup scheduled movement of data from expensive all-flash pools of storage into low-cost hybrid storage pools automatically based on file age. QuantaStor Network Shares are accessible via NFS and SMB protocols and the Backup Policies can be used to backup data to or from Windows servers, Linux-based servers, and 3rd party NAS filers including NetApp, EMC Isilon, EMC VNX, and S3 compatible object storage when combined with QuantaStor Cloud Containers.

"Automated Storage Tiering lets IT Administrators automate data movement across the grid, making it easier to keep the most important and recent set of files on all-flash storage without the labor costs of manually moving data to a lower storage tier," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "The ability to move data from hot storage to cold storage is a universal IT problem and our new Backup Policies help organizations quickly and easily move data around their storage grid, something that many of our customers in Media and Entertainment have been looking for as post-production studios have high performance requirements on active projects and lower performance requirements after projects are completed."

QuantaStor SDS utilizes a parallelized backup engine that can copy or move files as specified by policy while retaining extended attributes and permissions. The parallelized backup engine is able to rapidly scan massive filesystems to identify newly created or changed files using upwards of 64 concurrent streams. This makes it an ideal solution for backing up large scale-out NAS filers and now for automatic migration of older data to or from scale-out NAS filers.

QuantaStor SDS Automated Storage Tiering Benefits:

• Snapshots: Not only is data backed up, snapshots are created within the QuantaStor appliance for easy data recovery

• Parallelized backup engine: Enables quick scanning of very large filesystems with 100's of millions of files and makes better use of available network bandwidth

• Transfer data based on age: Storage Tiering can be configured to move data as well as copy data, users can choose files based on a specified file age range

The OSNEXUS QuantaStor SDS platform delivers a complete array of enterprise features and capabilities for file, block, and object storage. Additionally, it addresses a broad set of storage use cases including server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, and high-performance applications through scale-out physical and virtual storage appliances. QuantaStor SDS v4.5 with the Automated Storage Tiering feature enhancement will be generally available at the end of Q1 2018.

OSNEXUS Announces Advanced Storage Analytics for QuantaStor SDS

BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 25, 2018 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, today announced the addition of Advanced Storage Analytics features to its QuantaStor Software-Defined Storage Platform enabling IT professionals to better visualize their storage assets for effective decisioning.

With Advanced Storage Analytics, QuantaStor SDS v4.5 will let users visualize file, block, and object storage utilization in graphs, charts, and real-time dashboards to better understand their storage needs and simplify capacity planning. The QuantaStor web-based grid management interface also includes real-time visual presentation of block storage performance, network utilization, CPU and memory utilization, object storage utilization, and network health diagnostics.

"With these new storage-grid level dashboards and analytics tools in QuantaStor SDS v4.5, IT professionals will be able to take another leap forward in boosting the IT agility of their organizations," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "Being able to visualize how your storage assets are deployed combined with the ability to gather utilization metrics is really key for large organizations that require multi-tenancy features for chargeback accounting to different departments."

QuantaStor SDS provides a REST API for advanced storage analytics while leveraging open technologies such as Telegraf and InfluxDB so that users can enhance and extend the data collection features within a QuantaStor storage grid.

Advanced Storage Analytics features in QuantaStor SDS v4.5 include:

• Storage Grid Dashboard: A tile-based view of all appliances within a storage grid, their health, and a summary of storage utilization statistics

• NAS Analytics: Shows Network Share and Storage Pool allocations and capacities to simplify capacity planning and usage analysis

• Object Storage Analytics: Provides object storage cluster health and utilization information along with cluster capacity statistics

The OSNEXUS QuantaStor SDS platform delivers a complete array of enterprise features in a unified file, block, and object storage architecture. QuantaStor's unique storage grid technology links appliances together across sites so that data analytics can be viewed across all storage assets for an entire organization. With storage grids, companies can address a broad set of storage use cases including server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, archive, and high-performance applications all within a single grid. QuantaStor SDS v4.5 will be generally available at the end of Q1 2018.

OSNEXUS Offering QuantaStor SDS through the CenturyLink Marketplace

BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 9, 2018 -- OSNEXUS, developer of the QuantaStor SDS software-defined storage solution, today announced its participation in the CenturyLink Marketplace Provider Program. Certification in the program allows OSNEXUS to offer its QuantaStor SDS software-defined storage solution to businesses through the CenturyLink Cloud management platform.

The QuantaStor SDS solution delivers a complete array of enterprise features and capabilities for file, block, and object storage. In addition, QuantaStor SDS addresses a broad set of storage use cases including server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, and high-performance applications through scale-out physical and virtual storage appliances.

CenturyLink's Marketplace Provider Program allows participating technology companies like OSNEXUS to integrate their solutions with the CenturyLink Cloud platform where add-on and business-ready solutions are available to CenturyLink's cloud, hosting and network customers.

"The CenturyLink Cloud Marketplace offers companies some of the best technology solutions today to keep up with the ever-growing technology needs of enterprises," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "We are excited to be offering CenturyLink enterprise customers access to QuantaStor SDS with our unique storage grid technology as an easy-to-manage hyperscale file, block, and object solution."

For more information about QuantaStor SDS, visit the OSNEXUS website or visit the OSNEXUS CenturyLink Marketplace page.

OSNEXUS and Pogo Linux Certify HGST Flash Storage Solution on QuantaStor SDS

BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 11, 2017 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale software-defined storage solutions, and Pogo Linux, a leading provider of server and storage products, today announced that the Pogo Linux J2240S Flash Storage Solution has successfully achieved certification with QuantaStor SDS.

Designed for software-defined storage systems, the newly certified Pogo Linux J2240S balances performance with capacity, delivering high IOPS and low latency with a capacity of up to 184TB per appliance and 6PB of all-flash storage per storage grid. It offers flexibility to improve compute-to-capacity ratios by decoupling available storage from CPU resources. The 2U form factor, 24 bay storage solution exclusively uses HGST SSDs to provide a reliable and high performance all-flash platform.

"We are excited to see Pogo Linux exclusively use HGST for their J2240S Flash Storage JBOD, now certified by OSNEXUS for use with Quantastor SDS," said Martin Moody, HGST. "Pogo, with its proven hardware and SDS expertise, is the preferred integrator for deploying and supporting this pre-configured all-flash solution to demanding end users."

The OSNEXUS QuantaStor SDS platform delivers a complete array of enterprise features and capabilities for file, block, and object storage. Additionally, it addresses a broad set of storage use cases including server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, and high performance applications through scale-out physical and virtual storage appliances.

"The new all-flash storage solution from HGST is a reliable, high performing system and an ideal match for QuantaStor," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "Pogo Linux's great customer service and deep expertise with enterprise hardware and software-defined storage make them an ideal supplier for companies in search of an all-flash storage solution."

"Pogo Linux is pleased that OSNEXUS has certified QuantaStor SDS on our new all-flash storage system," said Erik Logan, CEO of Pogo Linux. "The HGST storage hardware combined with QuantaStor software is an ideal configuration for any company looking for a pre-configured all-flash storage array."

The Pogo Linux J2240S 2U24 Flash Storage Solution easily satisfies the needs of large enterprises and cloud service providers who require dense, shared flash storage. The system features a number of other benefits, including:

• Enterprise-Class High Availability: Hot swappable components including SSDs, I/O Modules, and PSUs

• Fully Upgradeable: Upgradeable firmware that enables drive technology and capacity updates without impacting applications

• Supports Enterprise Workloads: Including database, virtualization, and scale-out configurations

OSNEXUS and Pogo Linux Announce Hybrid Cloud Storage Solution for Microsoft Azure

BELLEVUE, Wash., Aug. 29, 2017 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of grid-scale Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions, and Pogo Linux, a leading provider of server and storage products, today announced a hybrid cloud storage solution that combines on-premise OSNEXUS based Pogo Linux Storage Director appliances with OSNEXUS QuantaStor Virtual Storage Appliances (VSAs) for Microsoft Azure. To help organizations implement a hybrid cloud strategy, Pogo Linux will be offering all of their OSNEXUS based Storage Director series appliances with a QuantaStor VSA cloud license key with every purchase.

QuantaStor Virtual Storage Appliances are Microsoft Azure-hosted virtual SAN/NAS storage appliances that support all major protocols including iSCSI and NFS/SMB. QuantaStor VSAs provide shared cloud storage that can aggregate and manage Azure storage resources with storage assets from multiple vendors across sites, on-premises, or across global data centers. QuantaStor VSAs can also be combined into a heterogeneous grid of virtual and physical appliances that scale to 64 nodes for increased IT efficiency and agility.

The Pogo Linux Storage Director series of SDS appliances is the ideal building block for creating a hybrid cloud storage solution. By providing many different storage and connectivity options, organizations can take advantage of the cost, performance, and security advantages of having local large-scale storage combined with the benefits of a cloud-based storage solution for archiving critical data or for use as a DR site. By creating a storage grid encompassing on-premise Pogo Storage Director and a QuantaStor VSA hosted in Microsoft Azure, organizations can seamlessly serve storage to both local and cloud applications in a completely integrated environment. This hybrid approach reduces costs, boosts performance, and simplifies security enforcement.

"The Pogo Linux Storage Director appliance series combined with QuantaStor VSAs for Microsoft Azure is a next-generation hybrid cloud solution for scenarios ranging from backup and archive, disaster recovery or any high availability storage need," said Erik Logan, CEO of Pogo Linux. "Our combined offering is a great opportunity for companies to get the most out of their storage and IT infrastructure, both on-premises and in the Microsoft cloud."

"Microsoft Azure is an ideal platform for companies looking to host their data both in the cloud and on-premises," said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "Storage Director appliances combined with QuantaStor VSAs on Microsoft Azure deliver an easy-to-manage global storage platform for organizations large and small."

Companies will now be able to purchase any Pogo Linux Storage Director appliance and receive a free one-year QuantaStor VSA cloud license key for use on the Microsoft Azure platform.

Visit the Storage Director product page to see all of the appliances supporting integration with QuantaStor VSA.

OSNEXUS and Pogo Linux Certify New AMD EPYC Based Storage Director Q2E Software Defined Storage Appliance on QuantaStor SDS

BELLEVUE, Wash., Aug. 17, 2017 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of software-defined storage solutions, and Pogo Linux, a leading provider of server and storage products, today announced that the Pogo Linux Storage Director Q2E software defined storage (SDS) appliance, based on the new AMD EPYC processor platform, has successfully achieved certification with QuantaStor SDS.

The newly certified Storage Director Q2E enables companies to take advantage of next-generation technology in the processor, server, and software-defined storage fields simultaneously. This combination continues to drive storage performance up, while at the same time reducing storage costs for even the most demanding environments.

"The new AMD EPYC Processors are innovative in that they offer a single-processor solution that has a high core count, high memory bandwidth, and are I/O optimized for today's storage workloads," said Steve Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "We are pleased that the Pogo Storage Director Q2E, powered by QuantaStor SDS, has passed our certification tests and is exceeding our performance expectations."

The OSNEXUS QuantaStor SDS platform delivers a complete array of enterprise features and capabilities for file, block, and object storage. Additionally, it addresses a broad set of storage use cases including server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, and high performance applications through scale-out physical and virtual storage appliances.

"AMD EPYC is advancing high-performance computing through its highly scalable 32-core system-on-a-chip design," said Erik Logan, CEO of Pogo Linux. "I am impressed with the initial performance across workloads we have seen on EPYC with the combined Storage Director Q2E and QuantaStor SDS solution."

Compared to previous generations, the Pogo Storage Director Q2E provides a huge step forward in computing, IO performance and bandwidth. Not only does the new AMD EPYC platform greatly increase performance, the platform also reduces costs by allowing the full use of all IO connectivity with only a single processor. This reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers with both small and large enterprise deployments. AMD's EPYC datacenter processor family, containing the "Zen" x86 processing engine that scales up to 32 physical cores, is designed for cloud-based and traditional on-premises datacenters.

OSNEXUS and Hammer Launch EMEA-Wide Partnership

Basingstoke, UK: 15th June 2017 – OSNEXUS, the leading developer of software-defined storage (SDS) solutions, and Hammer, a leading value-add server, storage products and networking distributor, have announced an EMEA-wide partnership.

Moreover, Hammer has been given exclusive rights to offer OSNEXUS’s versatile QuantaStor SDS software as part of a bundled solution, customised with Dell EMC OEM hardware.

QuantaStor SDS allows IT administrators to set up and manage complex open source SAN/NAS and object storage technologies with only a few mouse clicks, for use cases including high-performance computing, big data, virtualisation and backup and archive. 

Hammer’s capabilities combined with Dell EMC OEM’s industry-leading support will enable EMEA customers to quickly deploy, secure and maintain an enterprise-grade OSNEXUS SDS solution on Dell EMC PowerEdge R730 servers.

“With QuantaStor SDS' high-performance platform and the Dell EMC OSNEXUS OEM appliance, companies and public sector organisations can procure turn-key SDS appliances to securely and cost-effectively manage large amounts of data across their global datacentres or on-premise sites,” said Steve Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS.

Gerard Marlow, General Manager - OEM & Whitebox Storage at Hammer, said: “With the addition to Hammer’s portfolio of a key player in the form of OSNEXUS, and a unified SDS solution in the shape of QuantaStor software, Hammer is continuing to strengthening its SDS offering to customers.”

“By forming a collaboration with leading technologies, Hammer can offer a unique proposition to the market underpinned by our strong relationship with Dell EMC OEM, and we look forward to a successful future together.”

QuantaStor SDS is also available through Hammer as a software-only option which can comply with customers’ existing infrastructure.

“Hammer has been selected as OSNEXUS’s new distribution partner due to its hardware expertise and its proven market abilities in the software-defined storage space,” continued Umbehocker. “We are proud to announce Hammer as our hardware go-to-market distribution partner for EMEA.”

For more information regarding QuantaStor SDS and the exclusive Hammer appliance, please click here: http://bit.ly/2rvecmj 

Additional Information

Key Features of the Dell EMC OEM hardware bundle:

Grid Technology – QuantaStor grid technology redirects NFS/SMB connections dynamically, enabling storage grids to span global datacentres and allow hyperscale NAS to over 64PB per grid.

High Availability –  QuantaStor's SAN/NAS based High Availability (HA) failover is one of the fastest in the industry, made possible by QuantaStor’s highly-parallelised HA failover and IO fencing systems that ensure quick failover of ZFS-based storage pools.

Global Namespaces – QuantaStor Global Namespaces simplify NAS storage management and increase end-user productivity by combining shares into easy-to-access groups that are accessible across a storage grid of appliances.

Encryption and Security Policy Compliance – QuantaStor SDS complies with CJIS security policy standards ranging from end-to-end encryption to password policy enforcement to audit logging.

Advanced RBAC Security Model - QuantaStor utilises role-based-access-controls (RBAC) grouping authorisation of actions/operations into roles that are separate from resource groups enabling multi-tenancy and scoping of permissions to just the user's objects, or to all objects in the user's associated resource group(s), or to an entire grid of appliances.

OSNEXUS and Pogo Linux Partner to Offer Secure NAS Solution Compliant with the Criminal Justice Information Services Standard

BELLEVUE, Wash., June 14, 2017 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of Software-Defined Storage (SDS) solutions, and Pogo Linux, a leading provider of server and storage products, today announced that QuantaStor SDS will be offered on the Pogo Linux Storage Sentinel Q4236 Secure NAS Appliance. This new storage solution will provide an unprecedented level of security for industries such as law enforcement, financial services, healthcare, and defense.

The Storage Sentinel Q4236 NAS Appliance consists of a robust hardware platform supporting data-at-rest encryption combined with the latest version of QuantaStor SDS -- compliant with the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) standard. With a combination of both encrypted spinning disk and ultrafast solid state drive storage, the Storage Sentinel provides performance for the most demanding jobs while also adhering to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) specification for encryption. This provides true data-at-rest security, even if an individual gains unauthorized access to the physical media of the storage appliance.

In addition to hardware security, the Storage Sentinel Q4236 NAS Appliance is powered by the latest version of QuantaStor SDS which provides security features compliant with the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) standard. These features include activity audit logging, strict password strength and expiration requirements, system use notifications, data encryption in motion, and secure data shredding and role-based access controls (RBAC). As a complete package the Storage Sentinel SD provides a robust solution that is specifically designed for secure environments.

"With QuantaStor SDS' high-performance platform and the Pogo Linux Storage Sentinel Q4236 Secure NAS Appliance, companies and public sector organizations can now securely and cost-effectively manage large amounts of data across their global datacenters or on-premises sites," said Steve Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS.

"By combining our optimal hardware configuration with QuantaStor SDS, Pogo offers a complete solution that solves the traditional issues of scale-out storage while also providing the high level of security demanded by our customers. This is all backed by Pogo's award winning support and warranty coverage," said Erik Logan, CEO of Pogo Linux.

The Pogo Linux Storage Sentinel SD Secure NAS Appliance with QuantaStor SDS allows IT administrators to set up and manage complex open source scale-out file (ZFS), block and object storage technologies with only a few mouse clicks for use cases including high-performance computing, big data, virtualization, and backup and archive. 

Key Features of the Pogo Linux Storage Sentinel Secure NAS Appliance with QuantaStor SDS:

Audit Logging - Appliances automatically maintain audit logs of all operations with time-stamps, user ID, task/operation, client IP, and description so that systems meet regulatory security compliance requirements set forth by CJIS.

Encryption and Security Policy Compliance – Complies with CJIS security policy standards ranging from end-to-end encryption to password policy enforcement to audit logging.

Advanced RBAC Security Model - Utilizes role-based-access-controls (RBAC) grouping authorization of actions/operations into roles that are separate from resource groups enabling multi-tenancy and scoping of permissions to a user's objects, all objects in the user's associated resource group(s), or to an entire grid of appliances.

Configure a Storage Sentinel NAS Appliance here on the Pogo Linux website or call 888-828-7646 or email sales@pogolinux.com to speak with an SDS storage expert.

OSNEXUS and Acromove Inc. Partner to Offer QuantaStor SDS Data Migration Edition on the ServerPack Mobile Platform

LAS VEGAS, April 24, 2017 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions, and Acromove Inc., a manufacturer of unique hyper-converged portable NAS and Thunderbolt RAID equipment, today announced that QuantaStor SDS Data Migration Edition will be offered on the Acromove ServerPack™ mobile hardware platform.

Combining the power of QuantaStor SDS' high-performance SDS platform with Acromove ServerPack™ mobile hardware, companies can securely and cost-effectively migrate large amounts of data between public cloud hosting providers, global datacenters or on-premises sites in lieu of transferring data via the Internet or WANs.

"QuantaStor SDS Data Migration Edition solves the problem of cost-effectively moving large amounts of data into and out of datacenters or cloud environments while making it easy to copy, compress, encrypt and ship data anywhere at any time," said Steve Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "Together with Acromove's ServerPack mobile platform, QuantaStor SDS Data Migration Edition is ideal for on-site media and film production or content distribution."

"ServerPack is designed to act as an economical conduit between cloud data sources and datacenter or on premises destinations, especially when web connectivity is a problem," said CEO Artemis Achillopoulos. "By offering QuantaStor SDS with Acromove's mobile hardware platform, we can offer media and entertainment companies a solution that lets them easily and quickly move their data from the field to the cloud."

The Acromove ServerPack is a hyper-converged software-defined system that combines storage, compute, networking and virtualization technologies in one physical unit that is managed as a single system. ServerPack is designed to be portable, can include wireless and GPS capabilities, and is operating system and software application agnostic allowing customers to deploy it in virtually any environment.

QuantaStor SDS allows IT administrators to set up and manage complex open source scale-out file, block and object storage technologies with only a few mouse clicks for use cases including high-performance computing, big data, virtualization and backup and archive. QuantaStor SDS Data Migration Edition appliances can scale to over a petabyte of mobile storage all managed as a single unit to ensure data is safe and secure whether in transit, in the cloud or on-site.

OSNEXUS QuantaStor SDS Enables Global Namespaces for ZFS Scale-out Software Defined Storage

BELLEVUE, Wash., April 10th, 2017 -- OSNEXUS, the leading developer of Software-Defined Storage (SDS) solutions, today announced the addition of Global Namespaces for QuantaStor SDS. Global Namespaces simplify NAS storage management and increase end-user productivity by combining shares into easy-to-access groups that are accessible across a storage grid of appliances.

“High-growth, geographically-distributed storage environments make it increasingly difficult for users to manage their data. That reduces an organization’s agility and slows productivity” said Steven Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. “With QuantaStor, users get the performance benefits, high-availability, and ease of use that come with Global Namespaces without having to suffer from the latency and network costs that come with typical scale-out NAS solutions.”

QuantaStor implements Global Namespaces using Microsoft DFS and NFSv4 referral technologies to redirect SMB and NFS clients to network shares on specific appliances. The QuantaStor grid and highly-available (HA) storage pool technologies work together so that storage grids can deliver consistent performance, accessibility, and reliability as an environment scales. This effectively transforms the scale-up nature of the OpenZFS technology that QuantaStor utilizes into a scale-out technology. The technique eliminates performance impacts of spindle contention and multiple network hops that scale-out NAS appliances suffer from. With grid scalability to 64 appliances, QuantaStor storage grids can combine any number of network shares into any number of unique Global Namespaces so that finding and accessing storage is made simple.

QuantaStor SDS Global Namespace Highlights:

Ideal for Multiple Workflows including Biosciences, Media Post-Production, and Energy Research – Global Namespaces allow IT managers to distribute files in a way that achieves the best performance and capacity utilization per system.

Available Across Geographies – Researchers, artists, editors and producers are able to access their digital assets via a single, logical namespace, across geographically dispersed storage systems.

Increased Efficiency – Global Namespaces reduce human error, improve productivity, and streamline workflows enabling storage administrators to accomplish more at a lower cost while eliminating complexity.

Grid Technology – QuantaStor grid technology redirects NFS/SMB connections dynamically, enabling storage grids to span global data centers and allow hyperscale NAS to over 64 PB per grid.

OSNEXUS Achieves Cisco Compatibility Certification with the Cisco Solution Partner Program for QuantaStor SDS Backup and Archive Storage Solution

BELLEVUE, Wash., March 28, 2017 -- OSNEXUS announced that its QuantaStor SDS Backup and Archive Solution has successfully achieved Cisco compatibility certification with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers (https://marketplace.cisco.com/catalog/companies/osnexus/products/osnexus-quantastor-backup-archive-sds). The Internet of Everything (IoE) continues to bring together people, processes, data and things to enhance the relevancy of network connections. As a member of the Cisco® Solution Partner Program, OSNEXUS is able to quickly create and deploy solutions to enhance the capabilities, performance and management of the network to capture value in the IoE.

QuantaStor Software Defined Storage appliances are designed with the high-availability and scale-out features required for business-critical environments while simplifying the archive, backup and recovery process. The QuantaStor SDS Backup and Archive Solution protects critical data in the event of a major hardware or software failure that could be caused by events ranging from human error to a natural disaster. With OSNEXUS grid technology, QuantaStor can also be deployed as a highly-available grid of appliances to deliver up to 64PB of storage in a single scale-out filesystem accessible via major protocols including NFS and CIFS/SMB.

"One of the most compelling use cases for QuantaStor SDS is automating the backup and archiving of business-critical data," said Steve Umbehocker, CEO of OSNEXUS. "The combination of the QuantaStor SDS Backup and Archive Solution with Cisco's UCS C-Series Rack Servers enables OSNEXUS to offer customers a highly-available data storage and protection solution for any use case."

The Cisco Solution Partner Program, part of the Cisco Partner Ecosystem, unites Cisco with third-party independent hardware and software vendors to deliver integrated solutions to joint customers. As a Solution Partner, OSNEXUS offers a complementary product offering and has started to collaborate with Cisco to meet the needs of joint customers. For more information on OSNEXUS go to: https://marketplace.cisco.com/catalog/companies/osnexus.

* Compatibility certification via Interoperability Verification Testing and Cisco Validated Design is designed to simulate typical customer configurations and does not replace the need for on-site testing and interoperability validation in conjunction with actual implementation.