News

Oracle Releases Cloud File System

• By Jeffrey Schwartz
• February 07, 2011

Oracle today released software aimed at letting organizations build private clouds by adding elasticity to their applications via a clustered file system.

The company's Cloud File System lets organizations deploy their applications, databases and storage in private clouds. The software provides network access, elasticity and allows organizations to provision pooled storage resources, according to Oracle. Customers can use Oracle database capabilities to manage data stored outside of the database.

"Oracle Cloud File System delivers all the components and characteristics necessary for customers to deploy a storage cloud," said Angelo Pruscino, Oracle's senior vice president of product development, in a statement.

"Organizations can move beyond expensive and difficult to manage and scale hardware and storage silos to a highly available, scalable cloud environment that adapts to change in workloads to meet their service level objectives. Oracle customers can begin down the path to a cloud storage environment today with the Oracle Cloud File System."

The software consists of two primary components: the Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System and Automatic Storage Management Dynamic Volume Manager. Oracle describes the Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System as an industry-standard, general-purpose cluster file system intended for managing data not stored in the database.

According to Oracle, it includes services that protect the file system from human error, system failures or disasters. Security is provided through access controls and file encryption.

Meanwhile, the Automatic Storage Management Dynamic Volume manager provides volume management for Oracle's file system as well as third party file systems. It uses Oracle's Automatic Storage Management (ASM), to create elastic storage platforms, allowing customers to add or subtract storage capacity as data volumes change, Oracle said.

The Oracle Cloud File System costs $5,000 per CPU and is available now for systems running Windows Server, Solaris and AIX.