Software-defined storage (SDS) is not storage that is provisioned via automation. It is not even storage that is created via automation. While automation figures into software-defined storage, SDS is more about the data than it is about storage. It is about data management, transformation, security, and locality. It is about making the data available to the workloads in the best automated fashion possible, using policy over arbitrary decisions. SDS policy is driven by analytics from the underlying storage in which the data lives.
As such, we look at each SDS product by use case, tool, option, and mechanism. We then either match the results to an existing requirement or add a new one. Our categories are broad by nature, but our requirements are specific by design. The goal of our research is to demonstrate the extent to which each vendor’s offerings address our requirements, as well as how they stack up against each other. In our 2017 research we have focused on all things data: analytics, management, security, and transformation.
To read the white paper, “SDDC Software Defined Storage Coverage,” written Edward L. Haletky, CEO and Principal Analyst at The Virtualization Practice, click here.
