Sun Open Storage

Sun Open Storage was an open source data storage platform created by Sun Microsystems. It was promoted as a way to prevent vendor lock-in.

Before Open Storage, most storage systems used custom operating systems on specialized hardware. That specialized hardware often relied on older components because the custom operating systems lagged behind in supporting current processors and architectures. During the 2000s, rapid gains in processor performance and multithreading created a significant performance gap between these often single-threaded storage products and standard industry computers.

Open Storage aimed to build storage products on standard, current hardware using mainstream operating systems. These operating systems had large user and support bases, allowing them to keep up with new processors, threading, memory, controllers, and flash storage. This approach avoided the costs and performance penalties of custom hardware and operating systems.

Sun’s Open Storage products combined its server technology and software, starting with Solaris 10 6/06 ("Update 2") in June 2006. This release included ZFS and the protocols needed to build NAS, SAN, and local storage servers.

Core features from Solaris included the operating environment, the ZFS file system, NFS and SMB protocol interfaces, and the Solaris Fault Management Architecture. Sun produced the 7000 series Storage Appliance range, which added closed-source components to the Open Storage platform to create a complete integrated appliance. Other companies, such as Greenplum, Nexenta, and Delphix, also used the Open Storage platform to create specialized storage products.

Sun stated that products built on common hardware and open source Solaris would free customers from vendor lock-in. In 2008, Sun estimated that open storage products and related services would capture 12 percent of the storage market by 2011. Competing storage solutions were closed systems where all components had to come from one vendor.

The shift toward storage products based on software running on standard hardware was part of a broader industry trend. Companies including Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp, and many smaller vendors were also moving toward storage products built on standard server hardware with customized software.