ECS provides significant value for enterprises and service providers seeking a platform architected to support rapid data growth. The main advantages and features of ECS that enable enterprises to globally manage and store distributed content at scale include the following.

• Cloud scale: ECS is an object storage platform for both traditional and next-gen workloads. ECS software-defined layered architecture promotes limitless scalability.

• Globally distributed object infrastructure
• Exabyte+ scale without limits on storage pool, cluster, or federated environment capacity
• Unlimited number of objects in a system, namespace, or bucket
• Efficient at both small and large file workloads with no limits to object size

• Flexible deployment: ECS has unmatched flexibility with features.

• Appliance deployment
• Software-only deployment with support for certified or custom industry standard hardware
• Multiprotocol support: Object (S3, Swift, Atmos, CAS) and file (HDFS, NFSv3)
• Multiple workloads: Modern apps and traditional apps
• Secondary storage for Data Domain Cloud Tier and Dell Isilon using Dell CloudPools
• Nondisruptive upgrade paths to current-generation ECS models

• Enterprise grade: ECS provides customers more control of their data assets with enterprise- class storage in a secure and compliant system.

• Data-at-rest encryption (D@RE) with key rotation and external key management
• Encrypted intersite communication
• Reporting, policy, and event-based record retention and platform hardening for SEC Rule 17a-4(f) compliance including advanced retention management such as litigation hold and min-max governance
• Compliance with Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) hardening guidelines
• Authentication, authorization, and access controls with Active directory and LDAP
• Integration with monitoring and alerting infrastructure (SNMP traps and SYSLOG)
• Enhanced enterprise capabilities (multitenancy, capacity monitoring and alerting)

• TCO reduction: ECS can dramatically reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) relative to both traditional storage and public cloud storage. It even offers a lower TCO than tape for long-term retention.

• Global namespace
• Small and large file performance
• Seamless Centera migration
• Fully compliant with Atmos REST
• Low management overhead
• Small data-center footprint
• High storage utilization

The design of ECS is optimized for the following primary use cases:

• Modern applications: ECS is designed for modern development such as for next-gen web, mobile, and cloud applications. Application development is simplified with strongly consistent storage. Along with multisite and simultaneous multiuser read/write access, as the ECS capacity changes and grows, developers never have to recode their apps.
• Secondary storage: ECS is used as secondary storage to free up primary storage of infrequently accessed data, while also keeping it reasonably accessible. Examples are policy-based tiering products such as Data Domain Cloud Tier and Isilon CloudPools. GeoDrive, a Windows-based application, gives Windows systems direct access to ECS to store data.
• Geo-protected archive: ECS serves as a secure and affordable on-premises cloud for archival and long-term retention purposes. Using ECS as an archive tier can significantly reduce primary storage capacities. To allow for better storage efficiencies for cold archive use cases, a 10+2 erasure coding (EC) scheme is available and the default scheme of 12+4.
• Global content repository: Unstructured content repositories containing data such as images and videos are often stored in high-cost storage systems, making it impossible for businesses to cost-effectively manage massive data growth. ECS enables consolidation of multiple storage systems into a single, globally accessible, and efficient content repository.
• Storage for Internet of Things: The Internet of Things (IoT) offers a new revenue opportunity for businesses who can extract value from customer data. ECS offers an efficient IoT architecture for unstructured data collection at massive scale. With no limits on the number of objects, the size of objects, or custom metadata, ECS is the ideal platform to store IoT data. ECS can also streamline some analytic workflows by allowing data to be analyzed directly on the ECS platform without requiring time consuming extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes. Hadoop clusters can run queries using data stored on ECS by another protocol API such as S3 or NFS.
• Video surveillance evidence repository: In contrast to IoT data, video surveillance data has a much smaller object storage count, but a much higher capacity footprint per file. While data authenticity is important, data retention is not as critical. ECS can be a low-cost landing area or secondary storage location for this data. Video management software can use the rich custom metadata capabilities for tagging files with important details like camera location, retention requirement, and data-protection requirement. Also, metadata can be used to set the file to a read-only status to ensure a chain of custody on the file.
• Data lakes and analytics: Data and analytics have become a competitive differentiator and a primary source of value generation for organizations. However, transforming data into a valuable corporate asset is a complex topic that can easily entail the use of dozens of technologies, tools, and environments. ECS provides a set of services to help customer collecting, storing, governing, and analyzing data at any scale.

For more information about ECS, see the document ECS Overview and Architecture.