Distributed File Systems and Object Storage Leadership

Dell Technologies positioned as a Leader in Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for the seventh consecutive year.

Dell Technologies has been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage1 for the seventh year in a row – a Leader every year since the commencement of this report. According to the Gartner report, Dell Technologies has also once again received the highest overall position for its Ability to Execute in the Leaders quadrant of the report.1

We believe this positioning is an acknowledgment of our unwavering dedication to delivering the highest quality data platforms for our customers that help them harness the power of their data, while keeping it protected from cyberattacks. And as we’ve said every year since the commencement of this report, we couldn’t have earned this recognition without our customers, channel and technology partners, and our engineers, sales and product management teams – a sincere thank you to all of you for helping us to deliver incredible results year after year in the distributed file systems and object storage category.

According to the Gartner report, “By 2026, large enterprises will triple their unstructured data capacity stored as file or object storage on-premises, at the edge or in the public cloud, compared to 2022.1” To address this steep growth of unstructured data for emerging and established workloads, today’s infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders demand storage solutions that provide scalability, flexibility, life cycle management, ease of management and analytics insights into data. We also strongly agree that cyber resilience or cyberstorage functionality, a core capability noted in the report, is an important aspect of building out a modern cybersecurity strategy that effectively defends your organization’s critical data from ransomware and cyberattacks.

Flexible, Highly Secure Storage

Dell PowerScale, the world’s most flexible2 and cyber-secure scale-out NAS solution3, and Dell ECS, the world’s most cyber-secure object storage4, were evaluated for the Gartner report.

Our PowerScale OneFS scale-out storage – all-flash, hybrid and archive – systems are powerful yet simple to install, manage and scale to virtually any size. The newest editions to the PowerScale family, QLC drives for the PowerScale F600 and F900 all-flash nodes, can deliver the same level of performance as those nodes comprised of TLC drives, while requiring only half the power and half the rack space – take a minute to think about all that power and cooling that is no longer needed. The QLC enabled nodes are also up to 19 percent lower in price per TB5, delivering superior economics and value to our customers.

For those looking to the cloud, with innovative engineering we decoupled OneFS from a dependency on the hardware. This gives you the core value of OneFS and the flexibility and choice to deploy in the cloud. Dell’s Cloud Storage Services for Unstructured Data range from directly connecting to cloud for multi-cloud agility and zero data gravity to a fully integrated, native cloud experience. For example, with the latest release of PowerScale for Google Cloud, we now offer a fully managed subscription service of a 1-or 3-year term, and have added additional locations to include North America, APJ and now London and Frankfurt with locations in Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris, Warsaw and Zurich coming soon. Dell’s APEX  modern cloud and consumption experience continues to offer innovations that provide storage as-a-service capabilities to reduce overprovisioning and control costs.

In terms of object storage, Dell offers ECS and ObjectScale. ECS, a modern object storage platform designed for both traditional and next-generation workloads, provides organizations with an on-premises alternative to public cloud solutions. ObjectScale, our complementary software-defined product, inherits the global scalability, rich S3 compatibility, data protection and security advantages that made ECS a market leader in on-premises object storage. With ObjectScale, we have refined ECS into a software-defined, microservices-based architecture that leverages Kubernetes orchestration capabilities to deploy services in a highly efficient and distributed manner. This allows IT operators to run cloud-native applications alongside ObjectScale on the same storage infrastructure.

These are just a few highlights of Dell’s leading distributed file systems and object storage solutions. If you are ready to get more value out of your unstructured data, contact us to learn how our PowerScale, ECS and ObjectScale storage systems can help address your unstructured data needs for simplified management, improved performance, flexibility and cyber resiliency – at the edge, the core or the cloud.

A complimentary copy of the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage is available here. 

1 Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage” by Julia Palmer, Jerry Rozeman, Chandra Mukhyala, Jeff Vogel, October 19, 2022. Dell Technologies was previously recognized as Dell in the Magic Quadrant (2016-2019).

2 Based on Dell analysis, August 2021.

3 Based on Dell analysis comparing cybersecurity software capabilities offered for Dell PowerScale vs. competitive products, September 2022.

4 Based on Dell analysis comparing cybersecurity software capabilities offered for Dell ECS vs competitive products, September 2022.

5 Based on Dell internal testing, April 2022. Actual results will vary.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Dell Technologies.

About the Author: Brian Henderson

Brian Henderson is the Director of Primary Storage and ISG Portfolio Messaging at Dell Technologies. With a rich background in storage, networking, cloud, and big data, Brian is a seasoned technical marketing leader. He collaborates with his team to craft compelling product messaging, develop engaging content, and drive activations for Dell’s primary storage and cross portfolio of infrastructure solutions. Prior to this role, Brian spearheaded product marketing for Dell’s unstructured data, networking, and midrange storage solutions.