Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage
Distributed file systems and object storage platforms serve as the foundation for where the majority of enterprise unstructured data is stored and analyzed to drive business insights and outcomes. I&O leaders can use this research to shortlist vendors for unstructured data management.
Gartner defines distributed file systems and object storage as software and hardware appliance products that offer object and distributed file system technologies for unstructured data. Their purpose is to store, secure, protect and scale unstructured data with access over the network using file and object protocols, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB).
Must-have capabilities:
- Provides a POSIX file system, a flat namespace or a key-value store that can span multiple servers/nodes to scale performance and/or capacity.
- Data and metadata are distributed over multiple nodes in the cluster to handle availability and data protection in a self-healing manner.