Cloud computing presents many opportunities, which is why businesses of all sizes have begun to adopt it for storage, software-as-a-service and even infrastructure-as-a-service.

But the migration to cloud computing also presents many challenges, not least of which are the headaches from hybrid environments where there are traditional virtualized data centers mixed with private clouds powered by OpenStack and public cloud use run from the likes of Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) (AWS).

With cloud services still maturing, there often is the need for such hybrid environments, whether due to existing infrastructure or technology that has yet to keep pace with the needs of business.

In such environments, however, data availability across platforms can become a challenge.

Addressing the challenge is essential, so several firms have developed open, highly scalable storage platforms that can accommodate such environments and ensure data availability.

One solution is Red Hat (News - Alert) Storage, a rebranding of the Gluster scale-out network-attached storage system that was purchased by Red Hat in 2011.

Red Hat Storage Server helps enterprises manage the explosion of big, semi-structured and unstructured data growth while maintaining the storage performance, capacity and availability needed by business, according to the company. It can be deployed in all types of computing environments, whether on-premises, private, public or hybrid.

One company that swears by Red Hat Storage Server is SaskTel. The Canadian telecom company wanted to make their 250 GB of daily syslogs searchable and easy to manage while restricting access only to authorized individuals, and the Red Hat solution helped.

The company said the price tag (News - Alert) for storage hardware from some of the major vendors would have exceeded the budget for the entire project, while Red Hat Storage not only afforded significant cost savings over traditional SANs, but it was a natural fit for an IT shop highly skilled in using and maintaining Red Hat software.

Overall, it has been simple and easy for the company once it configured it properly.

"Because of the simplicity of Red Hat Storage," David Yaffe, a systems specialist at SaskTel told The Register (News - Alert) recently, "I see it as just another application that is in our toolset."

In conjunction with TMCnet, Red Hat is offering a free webinar this September on using distributed data storage to develop data availability solutions across public, private clouds and traditional data centers.

The webinar will show how to use distributed scale-out storage platforms such as Red Hat Storage to maintain availability in any environment. Key takeaways will include identification of technical challenges and pitfalls, as well as solution architectures with use cases.

The webinar takes place Wednesday, September 18 at 2pm EDT. Those interested in attending can register here.