Abstract

This IDC Perspective discusses distributed scale-out file systems that meet a variety of enterprise file sharing requirements. Distributed scale-out file systems have been broadly used for a variety of different enterprise workloads. As IT organizations go through digital transformation and employ a variety of new applications, storage infrastructure requirements are changing. The lion's share of data that will be captured, stored, protected, and analyzed going forward will be unstructured, and scale-out file systems provide a good platform for many of these workloads. But there has been a lot of confusion in the market around these platforms, how they compete with other types of scale-out file systems (i.e., clustered scale-up and parallel scale-out), and how to evaluate which features are needed for which workloads. This document takes a detailed look at the functionality of distributed scale-out file system platforms, matching features and capabilities across different platforms with workload requirements. Customers considering a scale-out file system will be able to better select an unstructured storage solution that meets their needs after reading this document.

"Enterprise customers that do not differentiate between different scale-out file system architectures often run into unexpected limitations and challenges with file system workloads," said Eric Burgener, research vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group, IDC. "IT managers tasked with buying file system solutions need to understand the different capabilities of the three different scale-out file system options since that will help them select the best platform for their own needs."

Coverage