Open source specialist Red Hat has launched Storage One – a family of hardware solutions that ship with Gluster storage software (formerly Red Hat Storage Server) on board.

Storage One is being jointly engineered with select partners, with the first version being built by American server vendor Supermicro.

Besides all the benefits of software-defined storage, the product promises simplified deployment through Ansible, infrastructure automation software Red Hat acquired in 2015.

The first appliance will be demonstrated at the upcoming Red Hat Summit in San Francisco, which begins on 8 May.

Acquisitions pay off

Storage One is based on Gluster, an open source platform for public and private cloud storage developed by Gluster Inc., an Indian storage start-up purchased by Red Hat in 2011.

Red Hat says deploying Storage One requires a minimum amount of skills – it features pre-configured workloads for general purpose NAS and media content repositories, and can be ready for operation in as little as 30 minutes.

“Enterprises that need to deploy elastic storage for modern workloads and application portability across the open hybrid cloud are looking to software-defined storage,” said Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager for Red Hat Storage.

“Many of our storage customers are looking to purchase and deploy a packaged solution that requires little customization. We are excited to bring together the flexible, software-defined power of Red Hat Storage with resilient hardware from our partner ecosystem to make software-defined storage more appealing.”

For the first outing, Red Hat has collaborated with Supermicro, and the partners will provide joint support.

“Leveraging Supermicro’s comprehensive portfolio of storage optimized servers, Red Hat Storage One provides an ‘out of the box’ solution that provides the convenience of automated deployment with the flexibility of software-defined storage,” said Michael McNerney, vice president for Software Solutions and Network Security at Supermicro.