File and Object Storage

IBM recognized for completeness of vision and ability to execute   

For the fifth year in a row, IBM has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage  for both its completeness of vision and ability to execute in the data-driven scale-out storage market for unstructured data. Gartner’s report evaluated three solutions in IBM’s Data and AI software-defined storage portfolio, IBM Cloud Object Storage and IBM Spectrum Scale and the Elastic Storage System (ESS) with YB scalable building blocks.

These systems offer more than storage products or even storage solutions.  IBM has created an AI information architecture building a storage strategy for customers journey to AI, Big Data, Analytics, and the hybrid cloud data center.  IBM continues to drive leadership for scalable high-performance workloads, as well as efficient, secure, scalable, capacity storage for file and object-based solutions.  IBM Cloud Object Storage and IBM Spectrum Scale are critical components of IBM’s Storage for Data and AI portfolio and scale to massive capacities with unique value for growing data requirements.  These systems are knit together with IBM Spectrum Discover that provides a data cataloging, indexing and policy engine to help solve the data and AI puzzle faster.

The release of this report comes a few months after IBM’s recent announcement of the new IBM ESS 5000 capacity building block with up to 13.5PB in a single IBM Spectrum Scale node.  Also announced was the performance enhancement of IBM Cloud Object Storage software that now provides up to 55GB/s in each 12 node scalable configuration and now supports the latest 18TB SMR drives for lower cost efficiency.

IBM Spectrum Scale

IBM Spectrum Scale is a highly scalable, data efficient, high-performance storage solution with enterprise security and a global parallel file system for both file and object storage data.   IBM Spectrum Scale enables the unification of data across a hybrid cloud into a single YB scale-out storage solution for the entire data center from edge to core to public cloud.

IBM Spectrum Scale is designed for parallel access to applications that need low latency data access, or frequent data updating or when storing large amounts of expanding data need constant access to applications.  Spectrum Scale with its life cycle management allows data to be moved to the most efficient capacity from NVMe to HHDs to cloud to Tape. A key differentiation for Spectrum Scale is it can also accommodate object storage, either native object data within the file system, or as an external storage tier. Other differentiators include real-time constant updates to a data catalog that expands use cases to include IBM Watson solutions, data governance, security analytics and data discovery and AI pipeline optimizations.  Leading the way in HPC, AI and analytics workloads, Spectrum Scale is used by many of the top supercomputers in the world.

IBM Cloud Object Storage System

IBM Cloud Object Storage has a simple message: Easier data access with concurrent parallel paths from anywhere with geo-dispersed or local-dispersed data protection and patented SecureSlice for security.   This makes IBM COS second to non for backup/archive, PB to EB data collaboration, distribution or large capacity data access, or finally any cloud storage for servicing large amounts of raw data.  IBM Cloud Object Storage (IBM COS) is designed to help customers future-proof primary and secondary storage for data and AI workloads. With multi-level parallel access, optimize capacity and performance and integrated real-time analysis with Spectrum Discover, IBM has a very differentiated offering, but it does not stop there. IBM COS also is very cost effective with efficiency that is easy to start, stays online and is easy to manage with built-in security

 

Read the Report

Disclaimer: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage, ID: G00376728 Analyst(s): Julia Palmer, Raj Bala, Chandra Mukhyala, September 30, 2019.

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