How to Evaluate Software Defined Storage Vendors

Today, with the rapid growth of data sources around the businesses,enterprises are striving hard to control and manage the vast data. #EMC ’s study on digital universe reports that the digital universe is growing nearly 40 percent a year into the next decade. With so much of data, the one question that persists is: “How are we going to manage and store all the data?” Till date, IT teams have been dealing with big data by expanding their storage system. This conventional extension of hardware is not only expensive but also contains complex architecture that slows down the system. The promising solution to the problem of mounting data is the concept of Software Defined Storage (SDS). #SDS offers great strength to storage hardware and provides flexibility to managers and IT buyers by centering the complete storage environment on a single management platform, regardless of the vendor. With this, functions such as implementation, RAID protection, and data tiering can be done on a single platform. This allows the system to be independent and free of hardware restraints, while enhancing the overall performance. Most of the storage vendors make excellent storage hardware without investing in the storage software. These vendors are grouped into 2 different classes namely Tier 1 hardware vendor and tier 2 vendors. Tier 1 vendors mainly focus on hardware product, such as Dell’s Power Vaultline and #NetApp ’s E Series, while tier 2 vendors like Promise technology and Imation Nexsan focus on software.

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