Home > Storage > ObjectScale and ECS > Product Documentation > Dell ECS: Networking Best Practices > ECS overview
ECS features a software-defined architecture that promotes scalability, reliability, and availability. ECS is built as a completely distributed storage system to provide data access, protection, and geo-replication. The main use cases for ECS include storage for modern applications and as secondary storage to free up primary storage of infrequently used data while also keeping it reasonably accessible.
ECS software and hardware components work in concert for unparalleled object and file access. The software layers are shown in Figure 1 along with the underlying infrastructure and hardware layers. The set of layered components consists of the following:
For an in-depth architecture review of ECS, see the document ECS: Overview and Architecture.