Rausch Netzwerktechnik is a distributor of individual and standard server and storage systems for the data center. The company is also developing one of the first solutions around the Kinetic Open Storage Project. We talked to Rausch Netzwerktechnik CEO Sebastian Nölting to learn more about the company and their involvement with open source.
Can you tell us more about Rausch Netzwerktechnik? What does the company do?
Since 1998, Rausch Netzwerktechnik has been working as a distributor of individual and standard server and storage systems for data centers and can relate on more than 250,000 systems in data centers across the globe. With a wide range of high-quality products for server, storage, and cloud computing, Rausch offers the perfect solutions for the DC business. Beginning with the development and manufacture followed by delivery, installation, and maintenance.
When was the company founded, who were the founders, and what was the motive?
The founder was Bernd Rausch in 1998. He sold the company in 2008. In 2015, I made a management buyout and now, with a friend, hold 100% of the shares. Since the beginning, we have been selling hardware for the data center, especially for Internet Service Providers. Most of them were standard server systems, then later more and more customized systems. The most important point was to increase the density and/or the efficiency. Power consumption is a big problem of data centers, and we always try to optimize our systems. In the meantime, we are selling to data centers all over the world, most of them are service providers or in the HPC sector.
What kind of products do you offer, and are they all open source?
All our storage systems are open source compatible. We have a family of storage offerings with different features:
System with Mainboard: BigFoot Flash is an all flash system with up to 52 SSDs in 2U; BigFoot Storage XXLarge is an all-rounder with 48 HDDs + 24 SSDs. The highest density worldwide in the shortest chassis. BigFoot XXCold is a cold storage for archive and lowest power consumption. The target is tape replacement.
System without Mainboard: BigFoot Object. Developed for Seagate Kinetic. We are the first and only manufacturer in Europe with a solution for Kinetic and with the highest density worldwide (72 disks in 4U and 750mm depth).
What market segments do you target?
Data centers of service providers, HPC, universities, and every customer with the need of high-density storage.
How are you involved with the Kinetic Open Storage Project?
We developed one of the first solutions around the Kinetic HDD. In 2016, we will have the next generation of our box with more internal and external bandwidth.
What kind of problems is the Kinetic Open Storage Project working to solve?
Less TCO for data centers with the need of >10PB of storage.
The Kinetic Open Storage Project is a collaborative project under the Linux Foundation. What are the benefits that you see of being part of such a project?
Kinetic is a new platform. We have a solution for this platform. Potential customers are not informed and want to get information about Kinetic. I can see this at the exhibitions, that the most people know that this exists. But Kinetic users are Linux-minded. To bring information about Kinetic through the Linux Foundation to the customer to get more visibility and awareness in the target group is a perfect way.
How does it help your company and your customers?
For us, we can go into new markets and become visible worldwide, because we are one of a handful of companies who have a solution for Kinetic. Our customers get the complete solution from one source: consulting, architecture, installation, and maintenance.
How important is open source for your company?
All important service providers are now working with open source. It is absolutely necessary that we are compatible.
Open source is becoming extremely popular in Europe. What’s driving this adoption?
In my market, open source has been important since the beginning. I think with the growth of data center, storage capacities, and server quantities, and with the growing cloud business, the commercial solutions are no longer attractive, and the customers are looking for alternative solutions with more flexibility and lower costs.
