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RED HAT, NETWORK APPLIANCE BRING iSCSI SOLUTIONS FOR LINUX

Red Hat Inc and Network Appliance Inc announced joint efforts related to the development and deployment of iSCSI within production Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments. Both Red Hat and NetApp have committed to supporting the iSCSI software initiator in the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 4 as well as future Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions based on the new 2.6 Linux kernel. The expanded partnership will enable customers to experience maximized flexibility, enhanced performance, and increased cost savings with open, industry-standard IP-based SAN environments.

Additionally, the Red Hat Global File System (GFS) and Cluster Suite are now supported with NetApp storage systems. Combined with industry-standard Fibre Channel and iSCSI technologies, Red Hat and NetApp offer customers enhanced flexibility with the ability to leverage their choice of iSCSI or Fibre Channel SANs. Red Hat currently uses NetApp storage systems for several of its mission- critical internal applications, including the award-winning Red Hat Network and other applications based on Oracle.

"NetApp with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a proven combination capable of supporting robust and open production application platforms," said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of Engineering at Red Hat. "The Red Hat and NetApp engineering organizations have collaborated to develop enterprise-level Linux Grid environments using an iSCSI-based GFS product suite. With current and future support of iSCSI in our upcoming Linux releases, customers will benefit from the most advanced GFS technologies complemented by the performance and cost leadership advantages of a NetApp SAN storage solution -- be it iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN. These solutions create greater choice for customers building open source architectures."

"NetApp IP SAN expertise makes us the natural fit as a reference platform for Red Hat iSCSI development efforts," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of marketing at Network Appliance. "NetApp has always been a proponent of costeffective and scalable storage environments based on open file systems and open networking technologies, including GFS and iSCSI."