Transform your infrastructure with software defined storage. Automate the deployment of IT services, optimize IT operations, and reduce TCO. Explore a whole new way to look at storage. Software defined storage is a pervasive approach to IT Transformation. Current storage systems are not equipped for the growing needs of your data. An IDC study confirms Dell EMC™ offers the broadest Software Defined Storage portfolio that provides the enterprise—grade agility to support your digital business demands. Dell EMC™ has the broadest network storage portfolio which is elastic scale—out with in—place analytics and cloud—connected. Dell EMC Isilon™—enterprise scale—out NAS file storage is elastic cloud storage—geo—federated cloud—scale object storage. Enterprise quality optimizes IT agility and delivers continuous value. Stability and availability optimizes IT agility. Enterprise—class Software Defined Storage delivers continuous value and Dell EMC™ features vendor neutral OpenStack and industry standard APIs. You require more infrastructure and application flexibility and more opportunities to innovate and gain critical insights from your data.

Dell EMC™ Software Defined Storage offers accessibility that meets your needs now and in the future. With software defined storage, enterprises can create giant geo—distributed pools of storage that grow as large as necessary with very little effort on the part of IT and its users. The economic benefits are unprecedented, too, as commodity—based platforms increasingly provide the foundation for next generation storage, replacing more costly purpose—built storage arrays. Elastic scale—out and multi—protocol are key capabilities for new storage systems designed for software defined, but what about my existing storage estate? Is software defined applicable to environment? The answer is yes, but in a different way. Rather than solving problems by introducing a new storage infrastructure, the final element of a software defined storage ecosystem solves problems through management and automation capabilities that, to an extent, allow you to manage a traditional storage environment as if it were software defined. By decoupling software from hardware, Software Defined Storage makes it possible to acquire low—cost hardware—reducing the cost of storage by as much as 50%.

Defining Software Defined Storage

Build, Buy, Or Both? Learn which software defined storage deployment option is best for you and your business needs. Dell EMC™ offers storage solutions no matter your choice. Software defined storage offers elasticity, scale, and simplicity—with no compromises In an age when more data—and more kinds of data—is being generated than ever before, Software defined storage gives enterprises a path to effectively address this explosive growth. Of course, as marketing machines have engaged in force the last several years it has become increasingly difficult to understand what, exactly, is meant by software defined storage. So in order to better understand how Software Defined Storage can help, let’s define the term in more detail. Geo—replication and global data protection optimizes storage efficiency while maintaining fast, reliable global access to data, providing full protection in the event of a total site failure. Applications maintain functionality and the system continues to deliver full read and write access from any global location. The world of IoT introduces a set of requirements for ingesting, storing, analyzing and managing data that traditional data storage simply can’t meet.

Elasticity, Scale, And Simplicity

When we talk about elastic scale—out, we are referring to the ability to incrementally add capacity to a storage system simply by adding more commodity nodes. As demand increases, such an elastic storage system will grow to meet changing demands. Contrast this with traditional storage arrays which, when the limit of a single system is reached, require you to add more systems each of which is managed independently. This then introduces management complexity such as having to migrate data between systems or having to develop complex provisioning logic to determine on which system to place new workloads. The scale—out approach of elastically expanding one logical system is a simpler way to address rapid data growth. While elastic scale—out gives a mechanism to store more quantities of data, multi—protocol access addresses the issue of storing more kinds of data—and to efficiently access that data in—place from applications. A multi—protocol storage system is one that provides access to the same data through one or more protocol interfaces. This make makes it possible for to lower TCO for existing storage while improving service quality and reducing delivery time.

It’s Not Just About Software

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about software defined storage is that it’s not just about software. After all, traditional storage arrays have always embedded sophisticated software stacks. And storage managers have always used software to perform management tasks like moving files and provisioning volumes. Furthermore, extracting software from a traditional array and re—packaging it as a software product does not mean you have Software Defined Storage. The fundamental concept behind software defined storage is the intelligent application of distributed computing techniques to the design of storage systems If you combine the power of distributed computing with the use of commodity hardware plus innovative storage optimizations for space efficiency, performance efficiency, manageability, and scale, then you have the essential ingredients necessary to cost—effectively manage explosive data growth: (1) elastic, scale—out, software storage systems designed to run on commodity hardware, (2) with in—place, multi—protocol data access, (3) with built—in geo replication mechanisms, and (4) all wrapped in a simplified and far more scalable management experience.

Features And Benefits

Software defined storage is one element of the software defined data center. The other two are software defined compute (think: virtualization or containerization) and software defined networking. But storage is the last to emerge—in part because it is the most complex. Designing a system that reliably stores your data with scale—out, multi—protocol access, geo distribution, in—place analytics capabilities, and with a simple management experience is a very hard problem. This is why it has taken storage vendors time to deliver on the promise. And it all starts with understanding what we mean when we talk about software defined storage: it’s an approach to storage system design using the principles of distributed computing that delivers elastic, scale—out, multi—protocol, and geo—distributed capabilities all with a simplified management experience. This is how we will all store more data, and more kinds of data, than we have ever done before. Reduced time—to—insight for analytics applications. Traditional storage often forces data to be copied from operational systems onto a cluster dedicated to analytics. A cloud—based data lake makes in—place analytics possible.