The product -- which is based on RHEL 6 -- provides a host of new options for software-based management of scalable storage, according to Red Hat, as well as integration with many top enterprise storage technologies like and Hadoop.

"This new functionality enables faster file access and opens up data within Hadoop deployments to other file-based or object-based ," Red Hat said in a statement.

The company also boasted that its new ability to "seamlessly" integrate file and object storage into a unified pool is an industry first, providing greatly improved accessibility.

FIGHTING WORDS:

However, Red Hat Storage 2.0 is not the only Linux-based provisioning and management tool making headlines of late -- a new method of applying virtualization management techniques to hardware dubbed Metal-as-a-Service was introduced last week in a blog post by Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth.