OTTAWA—IT professionals may soon have a lower-cost alternative to expensive storage area networks (SANs), according to a presentation by self-described Linux "kernel hacker" Ben LaHaise at the Ottawa Linux Symposium.

LaHaise revealed his vision to create a reliable storage solution using "commodity," or off-the-shelf hardware, therefore dramatically reducing costs. The core of the project was to support large storage capacities, easy setup, and error detection.

The project entails a Linux kernel driver, currently undergoing development, which passes storage requests directly to the hard drive. By networking several servers over inexpensive Ethernet hardware, redundancy can be achieved for a far lower cost than commercially available network attached storage.

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