OpenStorage Summit 2012 Extends Call for Speakers

Nexenta Systems to Host 1,000 Developers, Architects, CIOs, CTOs, and IT Managers from October 31 – November 1, 2012 in San Jose, Calif.

Santa Clara, CA — July 10, 2012 — Nexenta® Systems, a world leader in OpenStorage solutions, has extended the Call for Speakers deadline for the third annual OpenStorage Summit trade show and conference taking place October 31 – November 1 at the Doubletree Hilton in San Jose, Calif. Previous distinguished speakers include Arista Networks, VMware, Enterprise Strategy Group, Cloudscaling, Joyent, and LSI. Abstracts for consideration must be received by July 13, 2012.

With an expected 1,000 attendees, the OpenStorage Summit 2012 is the premiere educational event focusing on the transformation of the storage industry through innovative, open technology solutions. Architects, systems engineers, developers, technology support administrators, CIOs, CTOs, and IT managers will network with industry leaders who represent the diversity and pioneering spirit of the thriving OpenStorage community.

Conference topics under consideration include: virtualization, cloud technologies, performance, Big Data, high availability, OpenStack, backup, and more. All speakers will receive free admission to the pre-conference Nexenta training sessions and the OpenStorage Summit, along with a video of their presentation.

The interactive event will feature keynote addresses, lively panel discussions, vendor-neutral case studies, and best practices for evaluating and deploying innovative storage systems. For more information, visit http://www.openstoragesummit.org or email info@openstoragesummit.org.

Proposal Guidelines

Those interested in presenting at the OpenStorage Summit 2012 should email submissions containing the following information, by Friday, July 13, 2012:

• Abstract of your presentation
• Speaker bio
• Speaker name(s)
• Mailing and email address
• Telephone and cell phone numbers

Please also include complete contact information with the submission, including: name, title, company, phone, and email. Submissions may be emailed to Loretta Lowe: content@openstoragesummit.org

About Nexenta Systems
Nexenta Systems is the leading supplier of enterprise-class OpenStorage solutions. Its flagship software-only platform, NexentaStor, delivers high-performance, ultra-scalable, cloud- and virtualization-optimized storage solutions. Built upon ZFS technology, and running on industry-standard hardware, NexentaStor eliminates vendor lock-in and provides open, unified storage management at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.

More information about Nexenta Systems, and free trials of the ZFS-based NexentaStor, can be found at Nexenta.com or call +1 (855) NEXENTA. Partners selling NexentaStor-based hardware/software appliances can be found at nexenta.com/corp/partners.

Contacts:
Merrill Freund
Schwarz MSL
415-512-0770
nexenta@schwartzmsl.com

Public Sector Still Overwhelmingly Rejects Open Source Storage in Favour of Legacy Storage

Government departments, locked into premium brands, spend, on average, £236,000 every year

London, U.K. — June 12, 2012 — A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Nexenta® Systems has revealed that just about every local and central government department across the UK remains locked into premium storage brands, such as IBM, NetApp, HP, HDS, and EMC.

This is despite the government’s well-publicised efforts over the past several years to cut costs across the board and create a more level playing field between open source and proprietary software vendors.

The FOIA request looked into the storage buying habits of 48 local and central government departments, with 44 responding to the request. Key findings include:

• Departments reported spending, on average, £236,004 each year on storage, with spending reaching as high as £1.8M.
• They are buying, on average, at least 101TB of storage every year.
• Each terabyte of storage typically is costing them around £2000, but some are spending close to £5000 per terabyte.
• Resellers still are pushing legacy, big-name, high-margin brands, such as IBM, NetApp, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, and EMC.
• Just one local council admits to using open source storage, and a paltry 100GBs worth at that.

With the award-winning NexentaStor, it is possible to utilize SSD technologies in a manner that is appropriate for each business. Some companies would like businesses to believe that an all-SSD approach is needed to achieve a high-performance infrastructure. With SSD pricing currently higher than the cost of traditional hard disks, this just isn't feasible for many businesses.

Evan Powell, CEO at Nexenta, believes that the public sector needs to radically rethink its storage buying strategy in the face of a worsening economic climate. He said: “It’s incredible to think just how much of British taxpayers’ money is being wasted on expensive storage solutions due to a combination of vendor lock-in and general apathy. And it is sadly ironic that open source based storage is growing massively faster outside of the UK government despite the government’s proclaimed preference for open solutions.”

Powell claims many of the world’s leading storage buyers now rely on open source based storage, including some of the largest financial, telecommunications, and government organisations around the world. He cites KT (Korea Telecom), the U.S. Army, Cisco, and VMware as just a few examples where open source storage from Nexenta has helped cut costs by up to 80 percent, saving hundreds of millions of dollars that otherwise would be spent buying proprietary storage brands, while delivering the improved flexibility and innovation that is the hallmark of open approaches.

Powell believes that once open source storage starts to be adopted by the UK government, those resellers that cling to selling legacy brands will face a rude awakening. “Resellers need to have an open source storage strategy or risk being quickly shut out of deals. What’s more, resellers that make the investment in providing more savings and flexibility to the government will find those investments paying off.”

Ryan Tyler, Technical Sales, VA Technologies, concurs. “The public sector urgently needs help from IT partners who have the necessary skills and tools with open source storage to make the necessary transition as soon as possible. Government departments are faced with the rapid growth in data and are required to store it for increasingly longer periods. The rapidly growing cost of maintaining and expanding on their legacy storage systems is proving too expensive, a fact that the government needs to quickly wake up to.”

Powell concludes that research confirms that the UK government’s open standards policy initiative has yet to make real progress and suggests several reasons why they are not making the leap. He sums it up as a combination of issues, “Confusion, apathy, and fear, and the challenge of finding an IT partner with the necessary skills to roll out open source storage are part of the problem. In these austere times, if the government wants this initiative to work, it needs to begin by educating not only the public sector itself but also the service providers that cater to this sector.”

To download your free community edition of NexentaStor, please visit www.nexenta.com/corp/downloads

About Nexenta Systems
Nexenta Systems is the leading supplier of enterprise-class OpenStorage solutions. Its flagship software-only platform, NexentaStor, delivers high-performance, ultra-scalable, cloud- and virtualization-optimized storage solutions. Built upon ZFS technology, and running on industry-standard hardware, NexentaStor eliminates vendor lock-in and provides open, unified storage management at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.

More information about Nexenta Systems, and free trials of the ZFS-based NexentaStor, can be found at www.nexenta.com or call +1 (855) NEXENTA. Partners selling NexentaStor-based hardware/software appliances can be found at nexenta.com/corp/partners.

Media Contact:
Emily Gallagher
Touchdown PR
+44(0) 1252 717040
nexenta@touchdownpr.com

Nexenta and EraStor Delivers All-STEC SSD Array with Record-Setting Price / Performance

OpenStorage Leader and reseller partner EraStor Unveils New Appliance at OpenStorage Summit EMEA 2012

Amsterdam — May 24, 2012 — Nexenta® Systems, a world leader in OpenStorage solutions, along with EraStor, a new European-wide provider delivering Nexenta certified solutions, today announced at OpenStorage Summit EMEA 2012 that it has achieved a record-setting level of storage performance with NexentaStor and STEC solid-state drives (SSDs). The EraStor 25S all-SSD appliance Powered by NexentaStor uses 24 STEC SSDs and can achieve 253,469 sustained write IOPS at low latency.

“We believe that our mission to provide enterprise-class storage extends to delivering high- performance SSD-based solutions,” said Evan Powell, Nexenta CEO. “This result shows that striking a balance between high performance and low cost is not only possible, but readily achievable by all types and sizes of customers by using best-of-class SSDs. STEC, a Nexenta- certified solutions provider, delivers products that are a great foundation to any storage system.”

“The EraStor 25S all-SSD appliance generates huge gains of over 250,000 write IOPS sustaining 2.8GBps throughput with less than 2ms of latency. The EraStor 25S all-SSD appliance is a real leap forward in providing extreme performance while being cost effective for our customers’ infrastructure needs.” said Ryan Tyler, VA Technologies CEO, an EraStor Partner.

The EraStor 25S all-SSD appliance is available today and supported by key partners within the EraStor alliance. The EraStor 25S starts from 4.5TB raw capacity and scales up to 17.6TB (raw capacity) of pure performance storage in a single high-density 2U appliance.

NexentaStor is the only solution available on the market today that allows customers:

• The choice of underlying hardware free from the lock-in proprietary business models of legacy vendors;
• The ability to unify SSD, disk and hybrid use cases that combine SSDs and disks via one scalable system; and
• The management of all leading storage protocols via one system, including FC, NFS, iSCSI, CIFS and objects for cloud use cases.

With the award-winning NexentaStor, it is possible to utilize SSD technologies in a manner that is appropriate for each business. Some companies would like businesses to believe that an all-SSD approach is needed to achieve a high-performance infrastructure. With SSD pricing currently higher than the cost of traditional hard disks, this just isn't feasible for many businesses.

Nexenta's approach allows customers to use as many SSDs as they need and can afford. This flexibility will allow them to increase their usage of SSDs as the pricing gap narrows between SSDs and HDDs, and SSDs become more affordable.

By managing all workloads within a single high-availability (HA) and scale-out solution, and providing choices in the underlying hardware, Nexenta saves businesses time and money.

A second benchmark, using STEC SSDs with a larger system, is currently in process at Nexenta and is expected to exceed a nearly double sustained write IOPS performance at low latency. Nexenta intends to participate not only in the area of all-SSD performance, but in providing customers with the means and freedom of choice to introduce SSD technology into their systems at an affordable pace.

Tweet This: @EraStorDotEU & @Nexenta delivers 2.5x the IOPS in an SSD appliance with @stec_inc for ½ the cost. http://nexenta.com.

About Nexenta Systems
Nexenta Systems is the leading supplier of enterprise-class OpenStorage solutions. Its flagship software-only platform, NexentaStor, delivers high-performance, ultra-scalable, cloud- and virtualization-optimized storage solutions. Built upon ZFS technology, and running on industry-standard hardware, NexentaStor eliminates vendor lock-in and provides open, unified storage management at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.

More information about Nexenta Systems, and free trials of the ZFS-based NexentaStor, can be found at www.nexenta.com or call +1 (855) NEXENTA. Partners selling NexentaStor-based hardware/software appliances can be found at nexenta.com/corp/partners.

About EraStor
Erastor is a business relationship combining different Europeans firms from different countries to create a brand new product range. These firms have complementary or shared strengths and agreed to join their forces to create storage appliances available with European wide support and services. EraStor combines the safety and security of a top tier storage solution provider with the experience and knowledge provided by local partners working together to create one entity: EraStor.

For more information, see http://erastor.eu.

Media Contact:
Schwartz MSL
Merrill Freund or Lauren Connelly
(415) 512-0770
nexenta@schwartzmsl.com

Nexenta Systems Underpins Ballou Hosting Intelligence with 304TB of Enterprise Storage

OpenStorage solution provides 75% cost saving and halves time spent on storage management

London, UK — 21 May 2012 — Nexenta Systems, the world’s leading provider of OpenStorage solutions for the enterprise, today announced that rapidly growing managed services provider, Ballou, has implemented six NexentaStor systems to underpin its entire 304TB storage IT infrastructure. Nexenta’s OpenStorage provides enterprise class features including hybrid storage pooling, unlimited snapshots, deduplication, and thin provisioning but at a quarter of the price of other traditional storage vendors. Ballou will be presenting the benefits of Nexenta at the OpenStorage Summit EMEA 2012, on May 24^th.

Founded in 1997, Ballou prides itself on being one of Sweden’s most reliable service providers. Managing terabytes of data for businesses, governments, and individuals, it offers flexible and customised managed services, such as server virtualisation, email, and Web hosting facilities. Some of Ballou’s key competitive differentiators are its popular customer support staff, a reputation for proven high availability, and its datacentre facilities.

With a newly upgraded VMware infrastructure, Ballou realised its aging IBM SAN was not providing the performance required and it was rapidly running out of space. Additionally, with Ballou looking to implement several large cloud-based projects in the near future, it needed a storage infrastructure with scalability, superior performance, and one that could manage increasing customer requirements. Ballou needed an agile, versatile, and flexible solution, which would provide enterprise features at a competitive price.

After carefully assessing a number of solutions, and with support from its channel partner Layer 8, Ballou implemented NexentaStor. Together with Layer 8, Ballou designed a solution based on NexentaStor and high performance ZeusRAM and ZeusIOPS from STEC. Johan Tungström, CEO at Layer 8 IT-Services says: “Working together with Ballou is very challenging yet satisfying as their IT infrastructure is complex and they have a technical team with key skills in storage, virtualisation, and networking. The solution built has, from the ground up, scalability, flexibility, redundancy, and performance in mind so Ballou can easily grow in any direction.”

Daniel Jakobsson, Storage and Virtualisation Specialist, Ballou explains: “Nexenta has allowed us to upgrade our whole storage infrastructure. It has not only boosted our performance, but it offers us the ability to scale up and out, and still remain competitively priced. With our data growth rates exploding, no other approach to storage can match its scalability and flexibility. Nexenta also will play a key role as we launch several upcoming cloud projects.”

NexentaStor is used to underpin Ballou’s entire storage infrastructure, including its VMware environment, and manage a large number of its customers’ diverse types of data from Oracle databases to media files. Additionally, Ballou uses NexentaStor in its test environment and for replication in order to create a backup of all its data.

Jakobsson concludes: “By deploying Nexenta, we have spent 75% less than the potential cost of implementing a competing solution from the likes of NetApp. Nexenta also has cut the time spent on storage management by 50%, freeing up additional time, which can be used on other projects. With all these benefits, it was easy to demonstrate to my chief executive why investing in OpenStorage would enable us to stay ahead of the game at a fraction of the cost.”

Evan Powell, CEO of Nexenta says: "Nexenta is ideal for helping customers, such as Ballou, manage the deluge of data cost-effectively, while at the same time remaining flexible with the ability to support their customers’ requirements. We are dedicated to helping customers manage their virtualisation and cloud infrastructures. We look forward to a long relationship with Ballou.”

Find out more at the Nexenta OpenStorage Summit EMEA 2012
Daniel Jakobsson, Storage and Virtualisation Specialist at Ballou will be presenting the case study including why he chose Nexenta and how it fits into the IT infrastructure at Ballou at the Nexenta OSS Summit EMEA on May 24th from 1615-1700.

For more information, visit: www.openstoragesummit.org.

About Layer 8 IT-Services
Layer 8 IT-Services was founded in 2010 by three highly motivated IT consultants that together have more than 35 years of experience within the IT Industry. Layer 8’s focus is to deliver IT Solutions, Cloud Services, Managed Services as well as IT Consulting within Networks, Security, Storage and Virtualisation. Layer 8 is based in Stockholm, Linköping, and Gävle, SWEDEN. For more information visit: www.layer8-it.net.

About Nexenta Systems
Nexenta® Systems is the world’s leading provider of enterprise-class OpenStorage solutions. The company’s flagship software-only platform, NexentaStor, delivers high-performance, ultra-scalable, cloud- and virtualisation-optimized storage management. NexentaStor is a storage software solution built upon ZFS technology. It operates on industry standard x86 servers and provides NAS and SAN capabilities, including support for CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel storage access.

Running on industry-standard hardware, NexentaStor eliminates vendor lock-in and provides open, unified storage management at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems. For more information, and a free trial of NexentaStor, please visit us at: www.nexenta.com.

Media Contacts:
Emily Gallagher / Natasha Simmons
Touchdown PR
+44 (0) 1252 717040
nexenta@touchdownpr.com