Executive summary

Overview

This document lists and describes new features and functionality delivered in each in each ObjectScale release from version 3.4 to the current release.

Revisions

Table 1. Revision history
Date	Part number/revision	Description
August 2024	H20111	Initial release
April 2025	H20111.1	Updated for ObjectScale 4.0
August 2026	H20111.2	Updated for ObjectScale 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3

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Author: Jarvis Zhu, Christian Ariza

Note: For links to other documentation for this topic, see the ObjectScale Info Hub.

ObjectScale 4.3

Table 2. ObjectScale 4.3 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ObjectScale 4.3 April 2026	ObjectScale Software-Defined (GA)	Moves from a curated offering to a generally available configuration on qualified PowerEdge infrastructure, bringing ObjectScale's full S3 and geo-federated capabilities to a server-based deployment optimized for extreme-scale environments.
	S3 Tables (Tech Preview)	Adds table-native structured data support directly in ObjectScale buckets using Apache Iceberg, enabling access through engines such as Spark, Trino, and Starburst without copying data into separate databases or warehouses. This feature is delivered as a Tech Preview, disabled by default, and available through RPQ only.
	S3 over RDMA (Tech Preview)	Continues support for S3 over RDMA with GPU-direct access for non-production environments across the all-flash portfolio, including the ObjectScale Software-Defined platform, XF960, and EXF900. By integrating Dell’s S3 over RDMA SDK with GPU support and a RoCEv2 networking stack, ObjectScale bypasses traditional TCP and CPU bottlenecks, creating a near-direct path between GPUs and object storage for demanding AI pipelines. This feature is also delivered as a Tech Preview and is available through RPQ only.
	Optimized erasure coding for HDD appliances	Introduces an HDD-optimized erasure coding library and Chunk Type write flow for systems such as X560 and EX5000, improving throughput and latency for large write workloads while using CPU and memory more efficiently.
	Integrated load balancer for production environments	Makes the native integrated load balancer available for production use, eliminating the need for external load-balancing hardware and simplifying deployments. It supports resilient traffic distribution, node health detection, and active/active availability for single-site and multi-rack environments.
	122 TB drive support	Adds support for 122 TB ISE QLC SSDs on ObjectScale XF960, enabling ultra-high-density storage for AI and data-intensive workloads while reducing footprint and cost per terabyte.
	Compression visibility	Provides real-time visibility into compression savings at the VDC, namespace, and bucket levels through the GUI, APIs, and CLI.
	More efficient erasure coding schemes (24+2 and 24+4)	Adds new erasure coding options to improve storage efficiency while maintaining data protection.
	XF960 rack scaling	Expands support for 16G XF960 all-flash deployments to up to seven racks, enabling larger scale-out configurations with next-generation hardware.
	Gen 3 to Gen 4 node refresh for all-flash appliances	Enables a seamless technology refresh from EXF900 to XF960 nodes within the same VDC without manual data migration or application downtime. ObjectScale automatically rebalances data as new nodes are introduced and older nodes are retired.
	Single storage pool per VDC	Removes the ability to create multiple storage pools through the UI for new deployments, enforcing the recommended single-storage-pool-per-VDC model to simplify operations and improve stability, while continuing to support existing multipool deployments.

ObjectScale 4.2

Table 3. ObjectScale 4.2 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ObjectScale 4.2 December 2025	ObjectScale Software-Defined (Tech Preview)	Introduces ObjectScale Software-Defined on qualified PowerEdge infrastructure, engineered to optimize performance and scalability for AI, GenAI, and analytics use cases in large enterprises and CSPs.
	Faster small object performance	Delivers up to 20% higher throughput and up to 18% lower latency for standard 10 KB objects on all-flash appliances compared to the previous release, improving performance for large-scale deployments.
	AWS SDK 2.30 support and S3 API enhancements	Adds support for AWS SDK 2.30 and enhances S3 APIs with advanced checksums, chunked uploads, and trailing headers, improving streaming, data integrity, troubleshooting, and application reliability.
	S3 over RDMA (Tech Preview)	Provides breakthrough acceleration for AI and high-volume workloads, delivering up to 99% lower CPU usage compared to traditional S3.
	Integrated Load Balancer (Tech Preview)	Intelligently distributes ObjectScale traffic across a single rack in a single VDC, delivering consistent performance while reducing the need for external hardware and lowering TCO.
	24+4 Erasure Coding (Tech Preview)	Introduces a more storage-efficient data protection scheme for large-scale deployments.
	Bucket-level compression	Extends compression beyond cluster-level settings to allow bucket-level compression, enabling more granular optimization for diverse datasets and workload types.
	Enhanced key value store	Introduces a new key value store with 4x greater memory efficiency and up to 60% lower disk space usage, reducing costs and improving data lookup efficiency. This capability is available only on newly deployed clusters and is not supported when upgrading an existing cluster to 4.2.
	Enhanced email alerting	Improves email alert subject lines with added context such as severity, description, cluster, and node name, enabling administrators to prioritize issues more effectively.
	Dynamic licensing	Adds Dell Dynamic Licensing to automate entitlement management and simplify license allocation from a central portal.
	Secure syslog transmission with TLS 1.3	Enables secure syslog transmission over TCP using TLS 1.3 encryption, improving protection of operational data and helping meet compliance requirements.
	SHA2 authentication with SNMPv3 and AES 128+ encryption	Enhances security by combining SHA2 authentication, SNMPv3 management, and AES 128+ encryption to protect against unauthorized access and data breaches while safeguarding data in transit and at rest.
	All-flash multi-rack intermix support	Allows customers to mix previous-generation EXF900 appliances with current XF960 all-flash models across racks, enabling smoother upgrades and expansions without compromising performance.

ObjectScale 4.1

Table 4. ObjectScale 4.1 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ObjectScale 4.1 August 2025	User-configurable compression algorithms	Adds support for LZ4, Zstandard, and Deflate in addition to the existing Snappy option at VDC level. Compression can be configured through the ObjectScale UI and API, allowing administrators to balance compression efficiency and performance based on workload requirements.
	Improved space reclamation	Frees deleted capacity more quickly through improved garbage collection throughput and adds enhanced monitoring, alerting, and logging capabilities. This also improves background process efficiency and contributes to greater overall cluster stability.
	Richer capacity dashboard	Improves visibility into user, available, and reserved capacity, and introduces alerts when used capacity reaches 90%, indicating that the VDC is in read-only mode.
	Replication network throttling	Enables replication bandwidth control at the port level to help ensure stable performance and optimize resource allocation.
	SED support with local key management	Supports FIPS-certified self-encrypting drives (SEDs) with local key management on the XF960 all-flash appliance using the 15.36 TB drive configuration. Encryption keys are generated, stored, and managed directly through Dell iDRAC for added security and simplified management.
	TLS 1.3 support	Adds support for TLS 1.3 for both data-path and control-path communication through the UI and management APIs, providing faster handshakes, stronger encryption, and the removal of weaker legacy algorithms.
	S3 listing improvements	Delivers up to 3x faster object listing in multi-VDC environments, with improved handling of deleted object metadata and untrusted listing key validation for better browsing, discovery, and processing at scale.
	S3 event notifications	Adds push-based notification support through webhooks when object creation, deletion, or modification events occur in S3 buckets, enabling more efficient real-time application integration.
	S3FS support	Allows users to mount S3 buckets on Linux as local file systems, simplifying access for legacy applications and enabling use of existing file system operations.
	AWS SDK 2.29 support	Provides support for AWS SDK v2.29, giving developers access to updated AWS software development tools for ObjectScale-based applications.

ObjectScale 4.0

Table 5. ObjectScale 4.0 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ObjectScale 4.0 April 2025	Dell ECS is now rebranding to Dell ObjectScale	With the release of version 4.0, ECS has been rebranded as ObjectScale.
	Smart Rebalance	ObjectScale identifies nodes that have higher capacity utilization than other nodes, and balances data across all nodes.
	Enhanced Data Mobility	ObjectScale enhanced Copy-to-Cloud operation with an option for customers to configure an AWS Virtual Private Cloud endpoint as an S3 target.
	Object Lock with Read-Write Access During Outage (ADO) enhancement	Users can select if ADO should be enabled during bucket creation. ObjectScale enables Object Lock and Versioning to be configured in the UI.
	SMTP Email Alerts	ObjectScale supports email alerts through SMTP.
	Improved Storage Efficiency	ObjectScale introduces a dynamic REPO partial GC threshold mechanism and reduces the default REPO partial GC threshold from 66.6% of the chunk size to 50% of the chunk size to ensure better storage efficiency.
	Hide Secret Key option	Security Administrators can enhance security on a cluster by opting to hide user secret keys from administrators.
	User Console for Fabric SSL certificate renewal and SSH Key Rotation	User Console is a new tool added to ObjectScale to run self-service procedures. Renewal of Fabric SSL certificates and SSH Key Rotation can now be performed using User Console.
	X560 platform support	X560 is a new Generation X series hardware platform that is introduced in ObjectScale 4.0. X560 supports drive configurations of 6, 12 or 24 drives and rack capacity ranges from 60TB to 9.22PB.

ECS 3.8.1

Table 6. ECS 3.8.1 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.8.1 April 2024	Azure AD single sign-on support	ECS 3.8.1 now supports single sign-on with Azure AD On Behalf Of.
	Dell Secure Connect Gateway support	ECS 3.8.1 now supports Dell Secure Connect Gateway as EMC Secure Remote Services (ESRS) has reached end of service life.
	CAS Buckets supports Local Object Metadata Reads	ECS 3.8.1 now supports Local Object Metadata Reads on CAS Buckets.
	Simplified buckets delete	ECS 3.8.1 adds UI support for bucket deletion
	Disabled native HDFS support	ECS 3.8.1 has removed support for Hadoop HDFS (ViPRFS). Hadoop support continues for S3A.

ECS 3.8

Table 7. ECS 3.8 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.8 December 2022	Data movement (copy-to-cloud)	ECS 3.8 provides copy-to-cloud functionality where locally stored S3 object data can be copied to an external S3 target. This feature supports AWS and external ECS.
	Extended key management interoperability protocol (KMIP) Support	ECS 3.8 supports the new EKM cluster type, Thales CipherTrust.
	Object lock enhancements for ADO	ECS 3.8 supports Object Lock with read-only ADO and adds new flags to allow enabling Object Lock with writable ADO on buckets
	Simplified buckets delete	ECS 3.8 provides a better deletion option that empties the bucket on your behalf. It runs asynchronously and is available through S3 and management APIs.
	Metadata search acceleration	ECS 3.8 supports the Metadata search acceleration feature, a search query with the logical operation AND joining two or more conditions, improving the performance of queries.

ECS 3.7

Table 8. ECS 3.7 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.7 February 2022	Multisite failure tolerance support	ECS 3.7 provides multisite failure tolerance support to enable seamless operation even though two sites are down. Multisite failure tolerance support is limited to full replication of Replication Group (RG).
	S3 Select support	With ECS 3.7, efficiently used object storage to fetch only the relevant information out of a given object.
	Tokenization support for metadata search	ECS 3.7 enhances metadata search capabilities allowing you to search for objects that have a specific metadata value within an array of metadata values.
	EX5000 platform support	EX5000 is a new Gen3 EX series hardware platform that is introduced in ECS 3.7.

ECS 3.6.2

Table 9. ECS 3.6.2 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.6.2 August 2021	Object lock	Object lock launched in version 3.6.2 and protects object versions from accidental or malicious deletion such a ransomware attacks. It does not support ADO in this release.

ECS 3.6.1

Table 10. ECS 3.6.1 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.6.1 February 2021	FIPS-140-2 enhanced support	ECS 3.6.1 supports FIPS 140-2 mode by default for the DARE module.

ECS 3.6

Table 11. ECS 3.6 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.6 November 2020	Data services	Enable S3 service to connect with multiple Data IPs. Enforced a limit on the number of versions of an object a user can create to 50000. Restrict user IP addresses that can access a CAS bucket
	Cloud DVR	ECS supports cloud Digital Video Recording (DVR) feature which addresses a legal copyright requirement for cable and satellite companies.
	Security improvements	Security Administrator role is added for ECS management users. Added support for KeySecure 8.11 in ECS EKM.
	EXF900 Hardware	EXF900 is a new all-flash hardware that is introduced in ECS 3.6.

ECS 3.5.0.1

Table 12. ECS 3.5.0.1 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.5.0.1 October 2020	Policy Simulator	Policy Simulator is available in IAM Policies and Resource Policies.

ECS 3.5

Table 13. ECS 3.5 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.5 May 2020	Tech Refresh	Tech refresh is an entire life cycle of being able to prepare, configure, and migrate data off and on a node or cluster.
	Identity and Access Management	ECS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a service that provides secure fine-grained access to ECS resources. IAM is accessible only by S3 protocol. IAM policies and settings have no impact when data is accessed using other protocols.
	S3A support	The S3A client is a connector for S3, which enables you to run Hadoop with ECS S3.
	S3 Object Tagging	ECS is upgraded to provide S3 object tagging.
	Customer replaceable drive upgrades (CRU)	Users can replace disks on the ECS appliance and A new UI tab for this functionality has been implemented.
	Security improvements	USGv6 Certification Secure Port 9206 Secure Ports 9106, 10017 Secure Ports 9101, 10099
	Enhanced data visibility	Added End User License Agreement to ECS GUI Deprecated Old Monitoring UI Pages and replaced with a new one. Deprecated Old Monitoring APIs and replaced with a new one. ECS is upgraded with a mechanism in metering to calculate the number of buckets with top utilization that is based on total object size and count.
	SSD Read Cache	ECS is upgraded to enable SSD caching. There is one single SSD read cache drive per node. SSD read cache feature is implemented on ECS Gen2 U-Series and Gen3.

ECS 3.4

Table 14. ECS 3.4 release features
Release	Feature	Info
ECS 3.4 September 2019	SSL ciphers	ECS 3.4 and higher requires that ECS clients support the following SSL ciphers: DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384. DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256.
	Notify failed password change attempts	ECS logs an audit log event when the password change fails for reasons such as connection disruption, forgetting the password. You can view audit log for failed password changes.
	Limit number of login sessions per management user	The feature provides a mechanism for system admin to limit the number of management sessions per user. This operation requires the System Administrator role in ECS.
	Ability to remove or fail a VDC	You can remove a VDC from a replication group (RG) in a multi VDC federation without affecting the VDC or other RGs associated with the VDC. Removing VDC from RG no longer initiates PSO. Removing a VDC from RG initiates recovery.
	Security improvements	Lock user account after failed login attempts. Option to disable HTTP ports on ECS node. Secure ports 9069, 9099. Option to block NFS and HDFS ports. CAT II STIGs for OS Enterprise password enforcement Job Engine Exclusion Sets. Configure user interface inactivity timer separate from session timeout Configure management session timeout Support and Qualify Gemalto Safenet and IBM SKLM as EKM vendors Allow customer provided LDAPs certificates Support Custom LDAP Certificate
	Enhanced data visibility	ECS Monitoring and Alerting user interface, Advanced Monitoring from Grafana is integrated into ECS user interface. ECS Performance for Requests, visibility on All, GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, and HEAD Requests in the Advanced Monitoring dashboard. ECS Performance Monitoring - Request Latency ECS Performance Monitoring - Error Type ECS Performance - Latency Calculation in percentiles, The advanced monitoring shows percentile latency Median and 99th percentile latency. ECS Performance Alerts, new configurable performance alerts are added for ECS 3.4 release
	EX500 Hardware	EX500 is a new Gen3 EX series hardware that is introduced in ECS 3.4.

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