What is Software-defined Storage? A Beginner’s Guide

SDS acts as a layer within your IT infrastructure, that operates on top of commodity hardware. This removes co-dependency between your applications and the underlying hardware, as the applications no longer need to be tied to specific physical storage drives/devices.

SDS virtualizes the management of storage requests, rather than the storage itself. Through virtualization, it can enable features such as replication, automated provisioning, deduplication, backup, and snapshots.

Software-defined Storage and Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a more comprehensive solution that includes SDS as a foundational element for managing storage within the converged infrastructure. HCI does what SDS does, but across the whole stack, not just storage.

Automation

SDS should automate tasks like provisioning, data migration, and load balancing to simplify storage management, reduce manual effort, and cut operational costs.

User-friendly Interface

Choose an SDS solution that displays storage usage, performance metrics, and resource availability. This helps organizations track consumption, optimize resources, and control costs.

Standard Interfaces

SDS should use APIs to manage and maintain storage devices, making it easier to integrate with existing systems and applications while streamlining configuration and monitoring.

Virtualized Data Path

SDS should support block, file, and object interfaces, enabling applications to access data in the format needed without requiring infrastructure changes.

Scalability

SDS needs to allow storage capacity to be expanded without slowing down performance or requiring costly hardware upgrades. Make sure it allows your data storage to grow with your business demands.

Reduced Costs

Unlike traditional network-attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN) solutions, with SDS you aren’t locked into joint hardware and software combinations from specific vendors. There’s no need to drain your budget with expensive bundles – simply make use of your existing storage or server hardware.

Easy Scaling to Meet Future Demand

With storage resources abstracted from the hardware, scaling out physical storage capacity is far easier. SDS streamlines your environment, enabling the latest storage management features to be leveraged as required, without having to introduce additional resources.

Increased Agility

In an ever-evolving business landscape, it pays to be adaptable. SDS brings with it a level of flexibility, unmatched by traditional storage infrastructure. It allows an organization to dynamically provision and optimize storage resources. This provides the control and agility to adjust to new trends and requirements.

Streamlined Management

Traditional storage infrastructure can leave you with a mishmash of disparate systems that don’t communicate with each other. SDS works to consolidate these isolated silos, uniting them under a standardized management system, thereby maximizing efficiency.

Software-defined storage encompasses a variety of technologies that separate the storage management and services from the underlying hardware. Here are some common types of software-defined storage solutions:

1. Software-defined Storage Appliances

These are software applications or virtual appliances that run on standard servers or virtual machines and provide storage services, such as data deduplication, replication, and thin provisioning.

2. Virtual SAN (VSAN)

Virtual SAN is a type of SDS that aggregates local storage from multiple servers in a cluster to create a shared storage pool. It enables organizations to use direct-attached storage (DAS) in a virtualized environment without the need for traditional shared storage arrays.

3. Scale-out File Systems

These are distributed file systems that can scale horizontally by adding more nodes to the cluster. They provide a unified namespace for storing and managing files across multiple servers, enabling high performance and capacity expansion as needed.

4. Software-defined Object Storage (SDOS)

SDOS solutions are specialized SDS systems that cater to the requirements of object storage, offering features like multi-tenancy, data replication, data protection, and lifecycle management.

5. Software-defined Storage for Block Storage

These solutions abstract the management of block-level storage, offering features like snapshots, thin provisioning, and data replication, while running on standard server hardware.

6. Software-defined Storage for Storage Area Networks (SAN)

SDS solutions for SANs enable centralized storage management and virtualization of SAN resources, making it easier to provision, manage, and optimize storage resources in a SAN environment.

7. Software-defined Storage for Cloud

Some SDS solutions are designed specifically for cloud environments, allowing organizations to build scalable and flexible storage systems in the cloud while abstracting the underlying infrastructure.

8. Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

While not solely focused on storage, HCI solutions integrate compute, storage, and networking into a single, software-defined platform. HCI often includes SDS capabilities to manage storage resources efficiently.

Each type of software-defined storage solution has its strengths and is suited for different use cases and environments.

Many of today’s businesses have decentralized their data processing, moving it closer to where data is generated. This process is known as edge computing. Among other benefits, edge computing reduces network latency and congestion issues, as well as improves application performance.

However, decentralization can come at a cost; each edge site will have its own unique requirements. Traditional solutions can be prohibitively expensive and inefficient in this kind of environment where simplicity and flexibility are crucial.

SDS addresses these issues by simplifying on-site deployments. It enables lightweight, low-cost storage clusters that are powerful enough to support on-site applications and data, while minimizing downtime. Simply put, SDS can make edge computing feasible and affordable.

What is Edge Computing?

Interested in learning more about what defines an ‘edge’ environment? Explore our Beginners Guide on Edge Computing.

Here are some examples of SDS for edge computing:

Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO)

SDS lets you use existing servers to create flexible storage solutions. This approach maximizes hardware usage, simplifies deployment, and improves storage efficiency across remote or branch offices without needing extra infrastructure investments.

Challenging Environments

SDS enables storage in tough environments like tactical or first responder situations. Its flexibility allows deployment in mobile or harsh conditions, ensuring data remains accessible and protected even in challenging, on-the-go scenarios.

Large Amounts of Unstructured Data (Data Analytics or IoT)

SDS is a flexible solution for use cases that create huge amounts of data, like data analytics or Internet of Things (IoT) applications. It allows you to store and manage data across different environments, ensuring easy access, high availability, and cost-efficiency. As data grows, SDS can scale to meet demands.

High-performance Workloads (Databases)

SDS works well for high-performance tasks like databases, which need fast, reliable storage. It optimizes performance by allowing you to manage storage independently from hardware and scale resources without affecting performance. SDS also includes features like data protection and high availability for critical applications.