Open-source software maker and Linux distributor Red Hat announced the GlusterFS Advisory Board, an independent panel of several industry insiders whose job will be to boost the ecosystem around the open storage platform. The plan is that the nine executives and experts will help encourage developers to make code contributions to the project during their quarterly meetings.

Red Hat put a big emphasis on the independent aspect of the board.  The individuals are not representing their employers, and a maximum of three board members can be associated with the same company.

John Walker, Red Hat’s GlusterFS community manager will act as the chairman. Members include David Nalley, the CloudStack community manager for Citrix, Fedora co-founder Greg DeKoenigsberg and others.

“I’m excited to be part of the continuing evolution of the GlusterFS project,” said Richard Wareing, Storage Engineer at Facebook and GlusterFS board member. “The future of GlusterFS is bright, and I am honored to help guide the project.”

Red Hat received the rights for GlusterFS as a part of its acquisition of Gluster, now known as Red Hat Storage. The transaction exceeded $130 million, a price tag that can be easily justified when considering all the growth Gluster has seen while it was independent.

The Linux distributor was quick to integrate the storage vendor’s portfolio into its own, and revealed the Red Hat Storage Software appliance shortly after the deal. The solution is powered by GlusterFS 3.2 and is meant for large-scale big data analytics deployments.

Open-source is one foundation of today’s big data trend, at least in most of the times when the buzzword circles back to Hadoop. Red Hat is one of the biggest players in this industry and is capitalizing on the trend, especially now as it needs ways to further boost revenue.