Scality launches Artesca object storage for Kubernetes
With object storage increasingly becoming primary storage, Scality Artesca targets demanding workloads such as AI, machine learning, big data analytics and in-memory applications.
Scality launched a new object storage software product aimed at modern applications with high-performance demands.
The company bills its new Artesca as object storage for the Kubernetes era. It serves the adaptability demands of cloud-native environments by being lightweight, able to scale out and deployable without Linux know-how.
Artesca meets security and usability demands with built-in multi-tenancy and role-based access management, metadata search and workflow management. Scality claims Artesca can achieve tens of GBps of throughput per server, meeting the high-performance demands of use cases such as machine learning and big data analytics.
The product's target audience includes any DevOps support staff deploying applications that require object storage, businesses building out cloud-to-edge infrastructure and Kubernetes-savvy developers building new cloud-native applications. Artesca has a UI to simplify data management and offer a single pane of glass for admins, but its functions are also accessible via RESTful API.
Scality's flagship product is Ring, a software-defined, scale-out file and object storage system, but customer demand shifted to cloud-native starting around 2017, said Paul Speciale, chief product officer at Scality. This caused a shift in how enterprises use object storage as well. While Ring mostly dealt with archival data four years ago, the modern, cloud-based workloads demanded much more performance, which led to Artesca's development, Speciale said.
"It's analytics like Splunk, we see a lot of machine learning now, and the edge tends to be machine data generated from sensors, where the performance is much more critical," Speciale said. "We're putting a big bet down that object storage is the future for these apps."
Scality Artesca can start on a single server and scale out to any capacity.
Scality launched Artesca alongside a six-month exclusive OEM partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which will deliver Artesca on a series of hybrid and all-flash servers. When the exclusivity period is up, Scality will consider making Artesca available on other hardware, as well as software-only, Speciale said. Notably, Scality has released Ring through hardware partnerships with Cisco, Supermicro and Lenovo in addition to HPE.
At launch, Scality Artesca starts at $3,800 per year for the software, with support included. Artesca is also free to use without support for up to 50 TB.
The majority of newly developed, cloud-native apps will be using object storage as primary.
Randy KernsSenior strategist and analyst, Evaluator Group
Storage vendors got into the object storage business when it became popular as a large content repository, launching products such as IBM Cloud Object Storage, Dell EMC ECS and NetApp StorageGrid, said Randy Kerns, senior strategist and analyst at Evaluator Group. Scality Ring fits into that category, as well.
The use case has shifted from object storage holding exabytes of infrequently accessed data to primary storage for production workloads. Vendors have adjusted their object storage offerings for this new market need, sometimes by adding all-flash capabilities to their existing products.
Scality Artesca is different because it is built from the ground up for those high-performance, cloud-native applications, Kerns said. MinIO similarly offers software-defined object storage, but it has recently become more focused on VMware, Kerns added.
"The majority of newly developed, cloud-native apps will be using object storage as primary. This is a smart move. There is demand for this," Kerns said.
