Post by Chris Mellor (thank you) over at El Reg
You can find out more on Likewise here
EMC’s Isilon business unit has splashed out and bought a fast-growing startup, Likewise, whose software both EMC and other OEMs and enterprises use to NAS-enable Unix- and Linux-based storage devices.
VC-funded Likewise Storage Services (LSS) says it offers a consistent security model for file-based access and cross-platform, unified storage across physical, virtual and cloud environments. It has integrated identity and access management and secure access to data from Windows, Unix and Linux systems. Supported protocols include SMB/CIFS 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, NFS 3.0 and the RESTful API.
Microsoft SMB 2.2 support for Linux and Unix is in development. Ken Cheney, Likewise VP for marketing and business development, said: “For many IT organisations, block storage has been the only option for provisioning Microsoft application workloads. Block storage is complex and costly to administer.
“With Windows Server 8, workloads running on Hyper-V, as well Microsoft applications such as IIS and SQL Server, will be able to take advantage of the SMB 2.2 protocol, which aims to provide significant performance, reliability and scalability improvements unattainable with prior versions of SMB. The new SMB 2.2 has the potential to reduce the complexity and costs associated with block storage by enabling both application and user workloads to access file-based storage using NAS devices.”
Read on here
