When it comes to defining specific parts of the storage industry the definition should be as general as possible, avoiding vendor specifics while not being so generic that it becomes useless and doesn’t categorize anything. We’ve successfully applied this philosophy to describing object storage, software defined storage and hyper-converged storage.
That said, sometimes a vendor disagrees with our approach and insists that a technology must have a particular attribute or capability in order for it to be included in a specific category. This insistence is often a result of their role as a product or technology evangelist. And while we understand that vendors selling these new technologies need to be “true believers”, we don’t.
At the same time you will find us criticizing technologies that we like. Our latest articles pointing out some concerns with software defined storage (SDS) is a good example. Why do we do this? We want our readers to know the good and the bad about the initiatives they may be considering. Nothing is perfect and our job as IT professionals is to design infrastructures that take advantages of a technology’s strengths while working around or minimizing its weaknesses.
First An Object Lesson
A good example occurred a couple of years ago when we were asked to define object storage and object storage systems. One of the key sticking points was a vendor’s insistence that an object storage system must be able to do erasure coding. We pushed back pointing out that the data protection method (erasure coding vs. object replication) should not define a system as being object storage or not. We had other vendors insist that object storage must be delivered in software and that vendors who were providing turnkey hardware solutions were not really object storage. Again, we resisted and you can read the results in the article “What Is Object Storage”. What’s great about StorageSwiss.com is that any user or vendor that disagrees with us can make their case in our comments, as long as they are professional. We even tweet about comments that disagree with our positions.
Software Defined Dilemma
Now we are being asked to provide a definition for SDS. One of the sticking points is whether software defined storage must be software-only, meaning that you buy the software and then go buy the hardware from someone else. We don’t have a problem with that as a strategy and it certainly brings flexibility and the potential for cost savings. It’s also likely what most people think of when they hear the term “software defined storage”. But we think SDS needs to have a much broader definition than that.
SDS is, again in our opinion, the abstraction of the storage software from dedicated, purpose-built storage hardware. That’s it. But it doesn’t mean the software must be sold separately from the hardware. This allows SDS systems to come from a variety of sources including legacy storage vendors and vendors that bundle hardware with their software.
Vendor Provided SDS
SDS can indeed come from a traditional storage hardware vendor, as well as a storage startup that chooses to bundle hardware with their solution. These vendors have shifted from designing expensive, purpose-built storage solutions to off-the-shelf storage hardware, and focused most of their efforts on storage software. Some go so far as to start with an open-source core like ZFS, add some of their own unique software capabilities and then bundle it with off-the-shelf storage hardware. Others start from scratch, building code from the ground up, but then decide to bundle hardware with their software.
Is there a “true” Software Defined Storage?
When the SDS term started being bandied about, most IT planners and analysts probably took it to mean the software-only version that we’ve been discussing. But many legacy vendors and startups have taken a software first approach to storage system design and now also leverage commodity hardware. This ‘bundled’ version of SDS has been popular with IT professionals as evidenced by the continued success of turnkey storage solutions in the marketplace.
Many of those turnkey storage vendors apply software defined techniques to their storage products so they can quickly switch platforms if needed. While this version of SDS may provide more benefits to the vendor than the customer, it does provide the customer with a solution that they know has been vetted and tested to work together.
The net is that arguing over the SDS definition has little value in the face of the amount of work the IT team has to accomplish. The “true” solution is the one that you, as an IT planner, can leverage to help meet your immediate storage performance and capacity challenges within your given budget, while providing a manageable roadmap for the future.
For IT, the right SDS solution choice can depend on another popular catch phrase “time to value”. But this one is more than just marketing hype. In many situations, if IT doesn’t have the expertise or simply needs to get a storage infrastructure up and running quickly ‘turnkey’ SDS can do that. In this case time is more valuable than money. If they have the time and understanding, and need to wring out every possible dollar from the storage infrastructure, then ‘software-only’ SDS may be the best option.
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George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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