Top 8 Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)StarWind Virtual SANStarWind HyperConverged ApplianceDataCore SANsymphonyRed Hat Ceph StorageZadaraStorPoolIBM Spectrum Virtualize
  1. leader badge
    The most valuable features are the RBAC, role-based access control, and the reporting. NCI also provides a single platform, a single pane with a dashboard, to manage the entire infrastructure. We have complete information about overall utilization, performance, and a forecast for our platform in that single pane.
  2. leader badge
    It has improved our organization in terms of its uptime as our main cluster has never been offline due to a SAN failure. We are running Hyper-V on twin servers in failover, and being able to manage servers from anywhere I need to, virtually, has been a game changer.
  3. Buyer's Guide
    Software Defined Storage (SDS)
    February 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, StarWind, DataCore and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS). Updated: February 2023.
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  4. leader badge
    StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature. The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost.
  5. I am very happy with this product's ability to adapt, increase, and modify existing infrastructures.I found the solution to be very stable.
  6. The solution is pretty stable. Most of the features are beneficial and one does not stand out above the rest.
  7. The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use.The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed.
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  9. Creating snapshots within seconds for big disks has helped our different migration projects since it allows us to perform them in a short period of time.
  10. I like that it can virtualize more than three hundred storage providers.The ability to add the virtual machine on the Spectrum environment to sort out the data movers(DMs) and their schedules is a valuable feature. You are able to have, for example, four data movers to balance them so you do not have too much work on one data mover.

Advice From The Community

Read answers to top Software Defined Storage (SDS) questions. 686,748 professionals have gotten help from our community of experts.
Netanya Carmi - PeerSpot reviewer
Netanya Carmi
Content Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Ariel Lindenfeld - PeerSpot reviewer
Ariel Lindenfeld
Sr. Director of Community
PeerSpot
Jan 31 2023

Hi peers,

Let the community know what you think. Share your professional opinions!

Matt Baltz - PeerSpot reviewer
Matt BaltzRather than evaluating based solely on feature set, make sure the SDS platform… more »
21 Answers

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Articles

Evgeny Belenky - PeerSpot reviewer
Evgeny Belenky
PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Hi dear community members, Here we go again with a new bi-weekly Community Spotlight where we share with you recent contributions: articles, questions and discussions. Check them out below! Trending Cybersecurity Trends To Look Out For in 2022 Top 5 Network Access Control (NAC) Softw...
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Ravi Suvvari - PeerSpot reviewer
Ravi Suvvarivery good and valuable information
1 Comment
Netanya Carmi - PeerSpot reviewer
Netanya Carmi
Content Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
PeerSpot’s crowdsourced user review platform helps technology decision-makers around the world to better connect with peers and other independent experts who provide advice without vendor bias. Our users have ranked these solutions according to their valuable features, and discuss which features...
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Software Defined Storage (SDS) Topics

What is the purpose of software-defined storage?

Today’s businesses are growing at a very rapid pace, and SDS provides the much-needed solution to maintaining scalability, cost-effectiveness, and profitability. An effective SDS solution can ensure that administrative tasks are reduced and, by using automated protocols, improve response time needed to adjust to changes in storage requirements. SDS gives greater control to businesses to optimize growth and remain competitive in the marketplace.

Traditional storage solutions can reach storage capacities very quickly and do not allow for the flexibility and agility growing businesses need today to stay sustainable, productive, and profitable. Traditional storage solutions keep businesses locked into a defined infrastructure that can inhibit growth and effectiveness. By using storage virtualization protocols, SDS gives businesses the ability to respond quickly to storage capacity needs, helping them to stay competitive, productive, and profitable. SDS is where business enterprise is going and growing toward now and in the foreseeable future.

Although SDS can still be very much a do-it-yourself solution, there are many competitive vendor storage options available to meet the needs of every unique business enterprise in the marketplace today. These vendor storage solutions can meet businesses’ specific needs for agility, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and user-friendliness, making an SDS vendor solution an even better choice. These vendor storage solutions have all the hard work already done and have simplified the overall process, making an SDS solution even more efficient, effective, and productive.

What are the primary components of software-defined storage?

Software-defined storage gives an enterprise the freedom and flexibility to choose which hardware solutions to integrate with and the ability to choose how much storage is needed. It also allows for flexible options to quickly and easily improve storage capacity when needed. In most cases your SDS solution should:

  1. Offer flexible scaling options. This unique approach allows for flexible, fluid growth without impeding overall performance and productivity.
  2. Be fully automatable. Automation represents a simplified management process that keeps costs down. SDS can be designed to work on its own - without human interaction - to simplify processes, effectively reducing redundant human administrative tasks and increasing overall productivity and ensuring profitability.
  3. Offer standard interfaces, including an application programming interface (API) for management and maintenance of storage devices and services.
  4. Offer a virtualized data path: Block, FIle, and Object interfaces that support applications written to these interfaces.
  5. Offer independence. Enterprises can choose whatever hardware options they like best and what solutions work best within their current operational ecosystems. SDS enables businesses to quickly and easily make changes and adjustments as enterprise needs change. This provides for a more securely protected future to correspond with the unique needs of any enterprise while maintaining cost-effectiveness, productivity, and profitability.
  6. Offer transparency. The ability to monitor and manage storage use while knowing what resources are available and at what costs.
  7. Offer additional security. The additional transparency allowed by creating a unique SDS storage system increases monitoring capabilities and gives absolute knowledge of all anticipated growth capabilities, uses, and costs.
Benefits of Software-Defined Storage
  1. Flexibility - With SDS there is no vendor lock-in, which allows for a greater level of independence on specific hardware solutions. SDS will run anywhere the software can run. SDS not only offers a scale-up approach but a scale-out approach as well, which makes overall scalability easier to manage as enterprises grow while also maintaining peak performance. SDS will give greater day-to-day control and can also be used on-premises or in the cloud or hybrid cloud.
  1. Efficiency - There is no vendor commitment. SDS can work with a wide array of hardware solutions, many with less expensive third-party options, which makes it a very attractive solution. SDS can also integrate with older hardware solutions and devices, making it unnecessary to continually purchase newer licenses and upgrades.
  1. Profitability - An effective SDS solution can allow for tremendous cost savings by reducing administrative costs, minimizing hardware product costs, and shrinking storage costs, therefore making enterprises more profitable. The cost-effective strategy of SDS reduces overall expenses to the bottom line, making organizations more productive and profitable in the long run.
Features of Software-Defined Storage
  • Automation - SDS systems can make changes and adaptations with minimal human interaction, reducing redundant human tasks. This is an amazing cost-saving feature that warrants switching over to an SDS-driven solution.
  • Scalability - There is no limitation on scalable options with SDS. Enterprises can scale up and out with tremendous ease and flexibility. As it is all software-based, performance is never affected as it would be with a hardware solution. SDS allows for workflow, data, and storage to work together seamlessly, better facilitating storage to scale quickly as workflows continue to grow. As business needs change, SDS gives businesses complete control to make changes as they need it, when they need it - and to do it very quickly.
  • Security - SDS can offer improved levels of data encryption to keep access to enterprise data safe and reduce the threat surface to an enterprise. SDS allows for easier protocol definitions to minimize access, which in turn adds an additional layer of security.
Buyer's Guide
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
February 2023
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, StarWind, DataCore and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS). Updated: February 2023.
686,748 professionals have used our research since 2012.