Best Software-Defined Storage (SDS) for Freelancers

SoftNAS is a cloud-native and software-defined enterprise cloud NAS filer product line. It can be used for primary data storage, secondary data storage, and hybrid cloud data integration. It allows existing applications to securely connect to the cloud without reengineering. SoftNAS offers enterprise-class NAS features such as high-availability and deduplication, compression and thin-provisioning. It also supports LDAP integration and Active Directory integration. SoftNAS protects mission critical data, primary, hot data, backup/archive, and makes cloud data migration more efficient and reliable. SoftNAS offers the most comprehensive storage options in terms price vs performance and backend storage choice, available on-demand at petabyte-scale across the AWS Marketplaces and Azure Marketplaces as well as on-premises on VMware.

Elastifile effectively addresses the complexities of integrating data with the cloud, allowing users to effortlessly manage the process of bursting or "lifting and shifting." With robust support for standard storage protocols like NFS, it ensures that existing applications integrate smoothly without any disruption. Its comprehensive enterprise feature set guarantees the functionality and reliability essential for incorporating mission-critical workflows into cloud environments. The platform's user interfaces, monitoring tools, and billing systems are seamlessly integrated, making cloud storage management significantly more straightforward. Additionally, its ability to scale effortlessly allows for on-demand storage adjustments, providing the necessary flexibility to adapt to evolving business needs. The architecture, designed specifically for cloud environments, combines the most advantageous elements of cloud technology to optimize user experience while minimizing costs. Furthermore, automated data tiering efficiently manages primary storage and offers ultra-low-cost snapshots, catering to a variety of use cases across multiple zones and regions, ensuring high availability throughout. This comprehensive solution ultimately positions businesses to thrive in a competitive landscape.

Your traditional storage vendors aren't going cut cost by 80% and increase performance 10X. We can. croit is the fastest growing storage software company in Europe, recognized in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and Top 100 Innovator Awards in Germany. Ceph is the lowest cost storage in the world. DAOS is the fastest in the world. Choose one or the other or both. Our software-defined storage appliance installs Linux, and Ceph or DAOS in minutes, and helps you manage 40 Petabytes per administrator. We reduce days or work to minutes. We reduce incidents to near zero. We're the secret weapon you and your boss need to change the economics and the performance of your storage services.

IBM Storage Scale is an innovative software-defined solution for file and object storage, allowing organizations to create a comprehensive global data platform tailored for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), advanced analytics, and other resource-intensive tasks. In contrast to traditional applications that typically manage structured data, current high-performance AI and analytics operations are focused on unstructured data types, which can include a variety of formats such as documents, audio files, images, videos, and more. The software delivers global data abstraction services that efficiently unify various data sources across different geographic locations, even integrating non-IBM storage systems. It features a robust massively parallel file system and is compatible with a wide range of hardware platforms, comprising x86, IBM Power, IBM zSystem mainframes, ARM-based POSIX clients, virtual machines, and Kubernetes environments. This versatility enables organizations to adapt their storage solutions to meet diverse and evolving data management needs. Furthermore, IBM Storage Scale's ability to handle vast amounts of unstructured data positions it as a critical asset for enterprises aiming to leverage data for competitive advantage in today's digital landscape.

Break down storage silos using Nexenta's innovative storage software, which is driven by open-source principles. This solution offers comprehensive management capabilities through both appliance and customizable reference architectures. You will find all the essential features you expect from a leading provider in software-defined storage. Nexenta’s agile storage software accommodates a range of options, including all-flash, hybrid, and all-HDD configurations. Deployed in countless organizations globally, Nexenta storage software effectively handles a diverse array of workloads and mission-critical tasks. It supports some of the largest cloud infrastructures worldwide, delivers high-quality entertainment content, manages substantial amounts of government data across various continents, and ensures the secure and accessible storage of hundreds of thousands of medical records for healthcare providers everywhere. With its robust capabilities, Nexenta stands as a pivotal solution for modern data management challenges.

StoneFly delivers robust, flexible, and reliable IT infrastructure solutions that ensure seamless availability. Paired with our innovative and patented StoneFusion operating system, we are equipped to handle your data-centric applications and processes anytime and anywhere. You can easily set up backup, replication, disaster recovery, and scale out storage options for block, file, and object formats in both private and public cloud environments. In addition, we provide comprehensive support for virtual and container hosting, among other services. StoneFly also specializes in cloud data migration for various data types, including emails, archives, documents, SharePoint, and both physical and virtual storage solutions. Our all-in-one backup and disaster recovery systems can operate as either a standalone appliance or a cloud-based solution. Furthermore, our hyperconverged options enable the restoration of physical machines as virtual machines directly on the StoneFly disaster recovery appliance, facilitating rapid recovery in critical situations. With an emphasis on efficiency and reliability, StoneFly is committed to meeting the evolving demands of modern IT infrastructure.

Red Hat Gluster Storage operates without a metadata server, thereby removing any potential single point of failure and allowing for seamless scaling as your needs expand. You can set up a multi-tenant storage solution in mere minutes, free from the constraints of inflexible innovation cycles or particular hardware setups. This versatile storage solution can be utilized in various environments, including bare metal, virtual machines, containerized applications, or cloud infrastructures. As organizations shift towards digital workflows and content, the demand for reliable digital storage has surged, making Red Hat Gluster Storage particularly well-suited for the media sector. It enables the creation of cost-efficient, flexible, and high-performing virtual server and storage environments across diverse hardware systems. The increasing storage requirements in the media and entertainment sectors are outstripping both capacity and budgetary constraints. With competitive pricing compared to proprietary storage providers and the flexibility to scale as needed, Red Hat Gluster Storage stands out as an exceptional choice for media industry needs. Additionally, this storage solution ensures that as your business evolves, your infrastructure can adapt effortlessly to changing demands.

Integrate block, file, and object data locally using a comprehensive enterprise storage solution that offers a cloud-like experience. IBM Storage Ceph serves as a unified enterprise storage platform, allowing organizations to break down data silos while providing a cloud-native feel, all while aiding in cost reduction and quicker provisioning. As IT leaders transition from conventional storage methods to more cohesive enterprise storage systems, they find that these solutions adeptly manage various modern workloads across on-premises and hybrid settings, thereby streamlining IT operations and accommodating evolving needs. IBM Storage Ceph stands out as the sole enterprise storage platform capable of consolidating block, file, and object data protocols into one software-defined system, effectively supporting a wide range of enterprise operational workloads and minimizing the long-term expenses associated with maintaining separate storage infrastructures while ensuring a seamless cloud-like experience on-site. This capability not only enhances efficiency but also positions organizations to better respond to future data management challenges.

MooseFS represents a revolutionary concept in the Big Data Storage industry. It allows us combine data storage with data processing into a single unit, using commodity hardware. This provides an extremely high ROI. We provide expert advice and professional services for storage solutions, as well as implementations and support for your operations. MooseFS was launched in 2008 as a spinoff from Gemius, a leading European company that measures internet in more than 20 countries. It has since become one of the world's most sought-after Data storage software. It is still used to store large amounts of data by Gemius' core operations. Over 300 000 events per second are gathered and analyzed every second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a weeks. Any solution we offer to our clients has been tested on a real-life Big Data Analytics work environment.

Scality offers both file and object storage solutions tailored for enterprise data management across various scales. Our service seamlessly integrates with your existing infrastructure, whether it involves conventional on-premises storage or modern cloud-native applications. From vital healthcare and financial information to sensitive government data, cherished national artifacts, and streaming video content, Scality has demonstrated its capability in safeguarding valuable assets, achieving an impressive eleven 9s of data durability for long-term security. With our commitment to reliability, you can trust that your data is in capable hands.

FalconStor stands out as a reliable innovator in data protection, managing more than an Exabyte of data and empowering some of the globe's most challenging enterprises to upgrade their data backup and archival processes across both data centers and public cloud environments. The firm enhances data security and facilitates rapid recovery from ransomware incidents, all while reducing costs by as much as 90 percent. With a strong reputation, FalconStor serves a diverse clientele of 1,000 customers and collaborates with a wide-reaching network of partners worldwide. This commitment to excellence and innovation makes FalconStor a key player in the data management sector.

A cohesive, endlessly scalable, and easy-to-manage storage solution tailored for contemporary data centers, this technology effortlessly transforms enterprise storage frameworks into robust tools that foster innovation. SUSE Enterprise Storage stands out as a versatile, dependable, cost-effective, and smart storage system. Built on the Ceph platform, this cloud-native solution is crafted to handle a diverse array of demanding workloads, ranging from archival tasks to high-performance computing (HPC). It is compatible with both x86 and Arm architectures, and can be implemented on commonly available off-the-shelf hardware, enabling organizations to store and process data effectively for gaining a competitive advantage—streamlining business operations and generating deeper insights into customer behavior, thereby enhancing products and services. Furthermore, SUSE Enterprise Storage is designed to support Kubernetes and integrates seamlessly with various technologies such as ML/AI, EDGE, IoT, and embedded systems, making it a comprehensive choice for future-ready enterprises. This adaptability ensures that businesses can stay at the forefront of technological advancements while meeting their evolving storage needs.

Red Hat® Ceph Storage is a flexible and highly scalable storage solution designed for contemporary data workflows. Specifically developed to support data analytics, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), and other emerging applications, it offers software-defined storage compatible with a variety of standard hardware options. You can scale your storage to extraordinary levels, accommodating up to 1 billion objects or more without sacrificing performance quality. The system allows you to adjust storage clusters up or down seamlessly, ensuring there is no downtime during the process. This level of adaptability provides the agility necessary to accelerate your time to market. Installation is notably simplified, enabling quicker setup and deployment. Additionally, the platform facilitates rapid insights from vast quantities of unstructured data through enhanced operation, monitoring, and capacity management tools. To protect your data from external threats and hardware malfunctions, it comes equipped with comprehensive data protection and security features, including encryption at both the client-side and object levels. Managing backup and recovery processes is straightforward, thanks to a centralized point of control and administration, allowing for efficient data management and enhanced operational efficiency. This makes Red Hat Ceph Storage an ideal choice for organizations looking to leverage scalable and reliable storage solutions.

OpenIO represents a software-defined, open-source object storage solution tailored for Big Data, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Its innovative distributed grid architecture, powered by the proprietary self-learning ConsciousGrid™ technology, allows for effortless scaling without the need for mandatory data rebalancing while maintaining consistently high performance. This solution is compatible with S3 and can be installed either on-premises or in the cloud, accommodating any hardware configuration you prefer. Effortlessly scale your storage needs from Terabytes to Exabytes by simply adding nodes, which enhances capacity and boosts performance in a linear manner. Capable of transferring data at speeds reaching 1 Tbps and beyond, OpenIO ensures reliable high performance even during scaling operations. It is particularly suited for demanding workloads that require substantial capacity. You have the flexibility to select servers and storage media that align with your changing requirements, effectively avoiding vendor lock-in. Additionally, you can seamlessly integrate heterogeneous hardware of varying specifications, generations, and capacities at any time, ensuring that your system can adapt as your needs evolve. This adaptability makes OpenIO a compelling choice for organizations seeking a versatile storage solution.

Nutanix AOS Storage represents an innovative approach to storage solutions, moving away from conventional SAN and NAS systems towards a highly automated, scalable, and high-performance infrastructure. Its distributed architecture provides enterprise-level capabilities, ensuring both high availability and resilience for critical applications. Among its standout features is data locality, which keeps data in close proximity to the application, thereby minimizing latency; intelligent tiering that efficiently manages data across SSD and HDD for optimal performance; and robust data protection features such as granular snapshots and self-healing functionalities. Furthermore, AOS Storage allows for linear scalability, enabling organizations to begin with a small setup and expand effortlessly as their requirements grow. With the added advantage of flexible hypervisor options and support for a variety of data services, it proves to be an adaptable solution that meets the diverse needs of different applications and workloads. This versatility makes Nutanix AOS Storage a compelling choice for businesses looking to modernize their storage infrastructure.

PowerFlex, previously known as VxFlex, delivers software-defined storage solutions that foster dynamic adaptability for businesses aiming to enhance their datacenter functions. This innovative system offers remarkable flexibility, extensive scalability, and robust performance while streamlining infrastructure management and operational processes. With PowerFlex, organizations can accelerate their response to swiftly evolving market conditions. The platform grants unparalleled freedom to deploy and expand the essential workloads that propel your business forward, all while maintaining outstanding simplicity and ease of management. Experience significant performance enhancements, scalability, and durability through a software-first design. Seamlessly adjust to fluctuating business demands with an agile and flexible infrastructure. Furthermore, achieve top-tier results with comprehensive automation and enhanced workload management capabilities, ensuring your organization stays ahead in a competitive landscape.

Optimize your storage expenses and reduce complexity using VMware vSAN, a top-tier storage virtualization solution that simplifies the transition to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and hybrid cloud environments. With vSAN's integrated hyperconverged infrastructure, alongside vSphere, you can effortlessly oversee both compute and storage from a unified platform. This streamlined approach not only enhances business agility but also accelerates operations and minimizes costs, making it the ideal choice for future-ready HCI and hybrid cloud solutions. By extending virtualization capabilities to storage, vSAN provides a secure hyperconverged infrastructure that works seamlessly with your existing tools, hypervisor, and leading public cloud platforms. Furthermore, it allows you to achieve superior performance-to-price ratios by accommodating the most recent storage technologies on standard industry servers, ensuring your infrastructure remains competitive. As a result, organizations can better adapt to changing market demands while optimizing their technological investments.

StarWind VSAN specifically caters to the requirements of small businesses with limited IT budgets. It efficiently utilizes nearly all of the IOPS from your current raw storage, eliminating the need for costly hardware. The licensing model is transparent and adaptable, free from hidden fees or restricted features. With StarWind's Virtual SAN, you can achieve impressive uptime and fault tolerance using just a pair of nodes, and opting for a witness is entirely optional. Your IT setup remains robust even in the event of losing a complete node along with a separate storage device, whether it's an HDD or SSD. You have the flexibility to scale your system as needed, whether that means expanding, contracting, or extending. Management of your hyper-converged infrastructure clusters is made simple through an integrated StarWind web interface. Additionally, our team will help transition your existing workloads to StarWind at no additional charge! Our offering is uniquely crafted to provide enterprise-level capabilities to small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford large corporate budgets. Notably, StarWind VSAN operates effectively in a two-node configuration without necessitating witnesses, delivering all the expected advantages right from the start. This solution empowers small businesses to leverage advanced technology without the financial burden typically associated with enterprise systems.

The Vexata VX‑100F harnesses the power of NVMe over fabrics (NVMe-oF) to achieve exceptional economic efficiency and transformative performance. By eliminating unnecessary latency associated with the storage controller, the Vexata architecture ensures consistently high performance at scale, significantly enhancing application response times. This performance is particularly crucial for real-time analytics, which demands substantial data ingestion and processing capabilities; the Vexata Accelerated Data Architecture meets these needs by providing increased throughput and quicker response times. Furthermore, Vexata breaks through the conventional cost/performance limitations with a scalable solid-state storage solution designed to boost both application and analytics ecosystems. Additionally, VX-Cloud stands out as the first and only software-defined platform that caters to every stage of Machine Learning, ensuring optimal performance and scalability for cognitive and AI workloads, all while maintaining cloud-scale economics. With these innovations, Vexata is setting a new standard in the data storage landscape.

Enhance your data management, security, and storage methods with unrestricted access to select IBM SDS products and IBM Cloud® Object Storage. The IBM Storage Software Suite offers a cohesive interface that simplifies data oversight, while its cost-per-TB pricing model allows for straightforward capacity planning as your storage needs expand. Additionally, the software can be utilized in non-production test environments at no extra cost. The clear per-TB pricing structure for the entire suite is based solely on the amount of storage capacity, independent of the storage type or usage, eliminating any licensing complications when switching between various storage forms or data types. Each product within the IBM Storage Software Suite features a uniform user interface that minimizes mistakes and decreases the necessity for extensive training. Moreover, all products are engineered for seamless collaboration, ensuring smooth integration and comprehensive worldwide support for the entire solution, thereby enhancing operational efficiency.

Cloud-native technology has emerged as a crucial element in contemporary cloud infrastructure design due to its lightweight nature and remarkable portability. It also enhances the efficiency of development and operations (DevOps), enabling rapid service deployment and fostering business innovation. To expedite the shift toward cloud-native environments while keeping costs low, QCT has validated the performance and service quality of the Red Hat® OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes Platform. The QCT QxStack with Cloud-Native Platform is a robust Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering that leverages the Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform, augmented by Intel Enhanced Platform Awareness (EPA) technology. This solution, optimized for production-ready performance, incorporates a Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) architecture that enables the coexistence of virtual machines and containers, facilitating resource sharing. Moreover, the solution delivers outstanding network performance and reliability, ensuring optimal capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) throughout all phases of new technology deployment, which is essential for businesses looking to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

The convergence of high-performance computing (HPC) and machine learning is placing unprecedented requirements on storage solutions, as the input/output demands of these two distinct workloads diverge significantly. This shift is occurring at this very moment, with a recent analysis from the independent firm Intersect360 revealing that a striking 63% of current HPC users are actively implementing machine learning applications. Furthermore, Hyperion Research projects that, if trends continue, public sector organizations and enterprises will see HPC storage expenditures increase at a rate 57% faster than HPC compute investments over the next three years. Reflecting on this, Seymour Cray famously stated, "Anyone can build a fast CPU; the trick is to build a fast system." In the realm of HPC and AI, while creating fast file storage may seem straightforward, the true challenge lies in developing a storage system that is not only quick but also economically viable and capable of scaling effectively. We accomplish this by integrating top-tier parallel file systems into HPE's parallel storage solutions, ensuring that cost efficiency is a fundamental aspect of our approach. This strategy not only meets the current demands of users but also positions us well for future growth.

NetApp ONTAP Select provides powerful enterprise storage solutions that can be effortlessly implemented on your preferred commodity hardware within your own data center. By merging the agility and precise capacity scaling of cloud services with the flexibility, durability, and proximity of local storage, it creates a hybrid environment that is highly efficient. This system transforms a server’s internal disk drives, whether they are NVMe, SSD, or HDD, along with HCI and external array storage, into a nimble and adaptable storage infrastructure, delivering many advantages comparable to dedicated storage systems backed by NetApp® ONTAP® data management software. Users can quickly activate storage resources with cloud-like efficiency, transitioning from setup to active data serving in mere minutes. It allows for seamless data movement and replication, ensuring consistent management throughout your data fabric. You can dynamically increase capacity and enhance performance to align with evolving business requirements. Additionally, it supports Extreme Edge deployments, catering to mobile or autonomous vehicles, remote industrial settings, and tactical field operations, further extending its versatile applications. This makes it an ideal solution for organizations looking to optimize their storage strategy in various operational scenarios.

The IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) represents an advanced approach to software-defined storage, streamlining the deployment of fast and scalable storage solutions tailored for AI and big data applications. Utilizing cutting-edge NVMe storage technology that boasts low latency and impressive performance, alongside the expansive 8YB global file system and comprehensive data services offered by IBM Spectrum Scale, both the ESS 3200 and ESS 5000 nodes are capable of expanding to YB configurations within a unified global storage system that spans from edge to core data centers and extends to the public cloud. By integrating storage needs and removing silos across various platforms, such as Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, IBM ESS not only enhances efficiency but also lowers acquisition costs and simplifies the management of storage resources. This system is designed to support a variety of demanding workloads, ensuring that your organization maintains high performance across all operations. Furthermore, the flexibility and scalability of the IBM ESS make it an ideal choice for businesses looking to adapt to evolving data storage requirements.

GlusterFS is an adaptable network filesystem designed for high-demand applications, including cloud storage solutions and media streaming. This software is both free and open source, making it compatible with readily available hardware. It functions as a scalable, distributed file system that merges storage resources from various servers into a unified global namespace. Organizations have the flexibility to expand their capacity, performance, and availability as needed without being tied to a specific vendor, whether they operate on-premises, in the public cloud, or in hybrid settings. Many organizations across diverse sectors such as media, healthcare, government, education, web 2.0, and financial services have adopted GlusterFS for their production environments. The system is capable of scaling to several petabytes and efficiently managing thousands of clients while ensuring POSIX compatibility. It operates on standard commodity hardware and supports any on-disk filesystem that allows extended attributes. Furthermore, GlusterFS can be accessed via widely-used protocols like NFS and SMB, and it offers essential features including replication, quotas, geo-replication, snapshots, bitrot detection, and much more, ensuring data integrity and availability. Its versatility and robust capabilities make it a preferred choice for organizations looking to optimize their data storage solutions.