News

posted on 28 February 2008 08:54

Sun has donated its StorageTek 5800 archive system code to the OpenSolaris storage and Java.net communities.

In addition, it has been submitted to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), for use with standards developments around the new XAM object access standard, and is under consideration there. The Fedora Commons open source group will both contribute its software into OpenSolaris and Java.net, and use the Sun StorageTek 5800 source code for its own development efforts.

The 5800 or Honeycomb system is a repository for fixed content that Sun says provides faster access to terabytes of unstructured data via metadata processing. It is built as gigabit Ethernet cluster of up to 32 nodes, each containing a SunFire 2100 server with an Opteron 64-bit processor and four SATA drives. RAID 6 protection can cope with two disk failures. There is no one 'head' through which all I/O has to pass.

Data is stored as objects; there is no file/folder structure, and striped across all nodes. The software stack is built on top of Solaris and contains metadata analysis and creation functions, and has an API for programmatic access.

A 16-node cluster or cell costs around a quarter of a million dollars.

Now developers can download the 5800's binary code that runs on virtually any x86 system for free at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/honeycomb.

Sun asserts that the release of the source code is a viable choice versus closed, proprietary offerings that are expensive and leave customers vulnerable to vendor lock-in.

Why is Sun doing this? The uncharitable may suppose that the product is failing and that Sun can enhance its open source movement credentials through giving the code away.

However, Sun's business model is to provide open source software and so encourage the formation of developer-led eco-systems around an application area using its donated code. These lead to support contracts and, hopefully, the subsequent purchase of Sun's hardware to run the code because its hardware is the best on a price/performance/data protection basis for the job.

In other words, and crudely, Sun is using the open source movement to help shift its boxes.

Sun's Honeycomb code donation is a direct competitive attack on all providers of fixed content, unstructured information stores who have proprietary software inclued in their products and who charge for it. That includes EMC's Centera, currently the fixed content store market leader. It is Sun's belief that the open source movement will progressively weaken the hold of proprietary software through better functionality, software quality and value.

Sun is going further than either IBM or Novell in embedding itself in the open source movement as a fundamental part of its business model.