The 5800 System and Honeycomb

The original code name for the project that grew into the 5800 system was Project Honeycomb. The Honeycomb name lives on as the name of an Open Solaris community that is bringing the Honeycomb software stack into the world of Open Source. The first realization of the Honeycomb storage model as a real product is the 5800 system as described in this guide and related guides.

As a model for programmable storage systems, however, the Honeycomb API has a much broader reach than just the 5800 system. The programming model is designed to scale both up and down to any storage archive system that needs to abstract and separate the issues of how data is stored from how it is used. In recognition of both the past and the future, the string “honeycomb” and the initials “hc“ still live on in certain aspects of the API described in this guide. When the 5800 system API is used in contexts outside of the 5800 system, the API is referred to as the Project Honeycomb API.