I strolled into the office looking for all my fellow colleagues, all of who understood the monster task that was ahead.  We had one day until launch and there was a lot to get done.

The day passed and we worked hard until the early hours of the morning.  Darkness had fallen when we realized it was just the five of us, stranded in a board room, staring at our computers, desperately trying to get Inktank ready for its big launch the following morning.

Through all the tight deadlines and all that had to be done, we suddenly came to a halt.  We joked with each other as Mexicali Blues played on a laptop.  It hit home for all of us that something special was happening that night.  We were an Irishman, a Canadian, a man from Denver, and two Californians sitting in a room and waiting for Inktank to be launched across the wire.  We would all remember this night, a night that was made possible by all the contributors of Ceph and, of course, its creator.

So back to the gentleman in the elevator who started my day.  What are we doing here?  We are a part of something special, we are a part of the Ceph community and, with Ceph, we are surely delivering the future of storage.

So it begins. I do not want to panic you, but this could be the greatest night in our lives! After 8-ish years of “nose-to-the-grindstone” effort, Ceph is now supported by a real company. Inktank, a company of dedicated individuals full of storage expertise and a singular mission in their minds, hearts and shot glasses to transform the storage industry. Rewrite the rules. Knock down the fences. Break the shackles.

So, now we embark. Launching from a boardroom that looks down on the Hollywood sign. It’s not ours. It’s DreamHost’s. But that’s pretty much irrelevant after a couple of bottles of whiskey. What is relevant is that we are turning the page. We are starting down our road, aggressively changing the storage industry landscape. We are on a new journey, supporting those who believe that powerful, multipurpose, easily-managed, distributed data storage shouldn’t cost an exorbitant amount of money, lock people in, and force them to hire overpriced system administrators (no offense).

We embark on a new journey to provide the consultative services and long term support that will help the Ceph community fully leverage the Future of Storage. We are hopeful that you will join us. I suspect, if you do, you may also look back ten years from now and say, “yeah, that was one of the greatest days of my life!” Or at least you’ll remember the day when we started transforming how the world stores data. Enjoy the ride.

The Inktank team had an amazing week at the OpenStack Design Summit and Conference. We met some very interesting people who never heard of Ceph but were very surprised once they understood all of the amazing features that Ceph has to offer. Even before we officially announced Inktank, we had potential customers asking what do they do if they need support or have questions.

For us, OpenStack is all about the technology and the community. We were in attendance promoting the power of ceph to the open-source world and to also show our support for OpenStack. Even though the next OpenStack event is six months away, we still attend the OpenStack LA meet ups that happen at the end of each month currently being hosted by DreamHost and AT&T.