Software-Defined Storage

Synonyms

SDS; Storage virtualization; Virtualized storage

Definition

The decoupling of the control and data plane in a storage controller where the control software manages commodity hardware, and the control plan receives it storage management directives in the form of high level policies.

Main Text

Traditionally, compute servers, networking devices, and storage controllers had their own specialized hardware designs. However, with the emergence of cloud architectures, the same server hardware is being used as compute server, networking device, and also as the storage device (the compute part of storage controller). The cloud architectures are known as hyper-scalar architectures where a cloud operating system manages thousands of servers in racks. The cloud operating systems use software to control whether to use a server as a compute, network, or storage device. The compute, networking, or storage software is put in virtual containers (VMs) and executed on the underlying hyper-scalar...