About Us

LINBIT is the company behind the open-source storage software DRBD and LINSTOR. Since 2001, the company has been recognized in the public sphere primarily for its distributed replicated storage system for the Linux platform DRBD, which was officially integrated into the Linux Kernel in 2010 by Linus Torvalds.

LINBIT’s roots are deeply embedded in the open-source community, and its software and solutions are utilized by established organizations and businesses worldwide. They trust LINBIT because of the high performance and reliability they offer. This combination of belief in open-source solutions and delivery of exceptional software products to established corporate environments are where LINBIT has carved its niche in the global storage market.

LINBIT Background

LINBIT has two locations – our HQ is located in Vienna, Austria, and our second location, established in 2008, is located in Portland, Oregon. Between our two locations, LINBIT employs roughly 50 individuals overall.

You may ask how such a relatively small company can manage to combine such distinctive characteristics?

One of the main reasons for LINBIT’s success lies in its inception. Philip Reisner, the company’s CEO, initially started DRBD as a focus for his master thesis at the Vienna University of Technology in 1999. At first, the technology was just a tool to handle emails, but after realizing its full potential, Reisner, together with other Co-Founders, created LINBIT to further develop the product. The point being, LINBIT is a development-focused company, economic interests came second. LINBIT reflects its firm belief in the power of the open-source community, dedication to quality, and the value of dedicated team members who share this enthusiasm.

Currently, the LINBIT product lineup spans from high availability, disaster recovery, software-defined storage, storage replication, virtualization, OEM, cloud data services, flash storage, support to training.

LINBIT’s business model is focused on delivering subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services of its software and solutions. Depending on their needed level of support, customers pay one set price for unlimited access to LINBIT’s private software repository and up to 24/7 support.

Worldwide Users

With more than two decades of experience, LINBIT has created a solid reputation with a growing list of clients and partners consisting of some of the world’s largest IT companies.

The LINBIT product lineup has seen growing popularity over the past few years, surpassing 3 million worldwide users and 40 million downloads overall thus far.

TEAM:BIT

In May of 2019, our two teams traveled from their respective corners of the world to gather in the Out Banks of North Carolina for our first company gathering. We enjoyed an extended weekend consisting of semi-structured workshops, team building, great food, and plenty of poolside relaxing, which allowed us the opportunity to collaborate – sharing and creating new ideas alike. We walked away from the weekend with expanded knowledge, a greater understanding of and appreciation for each team and the work they do independently, as well as a renewed vision on how we can better collaborate, working more closely together to make LINBIT a better company for you as we continue to develop and support superior software for our customers and the open-source community at large.

Release of DRBD

2000

Incorporation of LINBIT

2001

Lars Ellenberg joins as Head of Development

2003

Release of DRBD Proxy

2007

Founding of USA Office & Incorporation of LINBIT HA

2008

DRBD in Linux Kernel

2010

DRBD in >1 million clusters worldwide

2015

LINSTOR is released

2018

LINBIT vSAN is released

2019

LINBIT sets the IOPS World Record

2020

Piraeus DS accepted info CNCF's Sandbox

2020

LINSTOR Gateway Release

2021

New IOPS Record on Ampere Platform

2023

Our Management

CEO

Philipp Reisner is both the CEO and one of the founders of LINBIT. He holds an MSc in Computer Science from TU-Wien, Austria. While graduating from that University, he initiated the DRBD® open source project, which is one of the technologies commercialized by LINBIT. He speaks at Linux and Open Source events occasionally and is an active contributor to the Linux kernel.

CFO

In alignment with the quote written by Marie Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach, "If there is one belief that can move mountains, it is belief in one's own strength," Gerhard Sternath founded LINBIT with a young team of creative, open source experts. He gained his experience from leading sales positions, and being a managing director at IT companies. Since the founding of LINBIT, Gerhard has been generating sales growth every year, relying more and more on an international network of partners and people who surround him.

COO

Brian Hellman is COO of LINBIT and co-founder of the US team. A self-proclaimed (but also by definition) nerd in general, he is happiest with and around anything open source. His love for the open source community started in 1998 with RH5, and continued to grow throughout the years. In his free time, he lives for his family, his Harley, participating in the Masonic lodge and tinkering around with computers. Though, if you ask his team members, they will say he is pretty good at being a “Mr. Fix It” as well.

CTO

Kernel programmer and an internationally recognized OSS specialist, Lars Ellenberg is the co-author of the high availability solution DRBD®, and is therefore one of the first contacts on the LINBIT team. Lars prides himself in both anticipating potential problems, and recognizing new problems quickly, thus ensuring that LINBIT customers don’t have a chance to notice them. 

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