ObjectScale is the next evolution in object storage. It is essentially Dell ECS software-defined object storage that has been refactored into a Kubernetes-native microservices architecture to accelerate application innovation and lower TCO. It has been designed to run on infrastructure platforms such as VMware Cloud Foundation with Tanzu or vSphere with Tanzu, which can then be run on infrastructure such as VxRail HCI integrated systems or PowerEdge servers. Customers can manage S3-compatible modern application stateful services such as ObjectScale and link IT policies to it as part of its integration with the VMware vSAN Data Persistence Platform framework.

ObjectScale is built with a software-defined, containerized architecture in a Kubernetes-native package. It is designed for shared infrastructure and multitenant environments. It is a software bundle of management services that contains everything required to deploy and consume Dell object storage. ObjectScale is deployed in a Kubernetes cluster, allowing Kubernetes to handle the necessary orchestration. One ObjectScale instance with one or more object stores is deployed per Kubernetes cluster.

The following figure shows the high-level architecture of ObjectScale running within VMware Cloud Foundation on the VxRail environment.

Figure 7.   High-level architecture of ObjectScale running within VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail environment

Use cases

With rich S3 compatibility, enterprise-grade data protection features, and a globally scalable architecture, ObjectScale supports several modern and traditional use cases. ObjectScale is designed to support data-intensive applications and workloads:

• Cloud-native web and mobile applications—ObjectScale is purpose-built for cloud-native applications. With rich S3 compatibility for data access and Kubernetes APIs for container management, developers can integrate object stores into their continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines in a self-service manner, accelerating application development. ObjectScale replication capabilities enable data to be distributed across any number of sites to promote fault tolerance and low-latency access. 
• Dev/Test—ObjectScale serves as an ideal platform for modern application development that requires S3. Automated provisioning and an integrated workload sizer provide for easy deployment of object stores and buckets. Multitenancy provides resource isolation, while identity and access management (IAM) policies enable secure data access.
• Consolidated data lake—ObjectScale can serve as a centralized data lake storing sensor telemetry, machine-generated logs, and application data. Federate multiple sites to eliminate data silos and provide anywhere access to data from edge to core. Objects are tagged to enhance analysis and make data more discoverable.
• AI and ML—ObjectScale delivers performance at scale to support next-generation machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads. ObjectScale can deliver datasets at high transfer rates to the most demanding CPU and GPU servers, exposing AI training algorithms to more data without introducing the complexity of HPC storage. Clusters can be scaled-out with ease to linearly scale performance and capacity.
• Analytics—Run rapid queries on a performant ObjectScale data lake to generate operational insights at the speed the business demands. With the ability to deploy analytics on NVMe-based, all-flash drives, storage performance is no longer a bottleneck. Custom tags add context to data for greater discoverability and faster results. S3a enables Hadoop workloads to directly read and write data to ObjectScale, replacing the need for complex HDFS cluster management.
• Backup and archive—ObjectScale is a TCO-optimized S3 backup target and long-term archive. Featuring ObjectScale Lock for data immutability, data-at-rest encryption (D@RE), global replication, and erasure-coding protection schemes, ObjectScale safeguards data from ransomware attacks and ensures resiliency from node or disk failures.