In the evolving landscape of object storage solutions, Dell Technologies offers two prominent systems: Dell ECS, introduced in 2014, and Dell ObjectScale, introduced in 2022. ObjectScale is the evolution of ECS and was designed for Kubernetes environments. It leverages a microservices architecture to deliver cloud-native capabilities.
For current-generation ECS appliances, we will provide an upgrade path to ObjectScale in a future release, ensuring continuity of operations.
We list the major difference between Dell ObjectScale and ECS here to help you understand the ObjectScale better.
Table 1 Comparison between ObjectScale and ECS
| ObjectScale | ECS |
Deployment as Appliance | Yes, NVMe SSD (HDD in future) | Yes. HDD and NVMe SSD. |
Deployment as Software-defined | Yes. Containerized/microservices architecture orchestrated using Kubernetes. | No, though ECS is Software Defined, ObjectScale is positioned for Software Defined deployments going forward. |
Architecture | True microservices. Each individual function of ObjectScale is deployed as an app service. | Monolithic. Although containerized and deployable using Docker. |
Data Services | HTTP(s) (S3), (through GeoDrive: CIFS, SMB.) | HTTP(s) (S3), NFS, SWIFT, ATMOS, CAS (through GeoDrive: CIFS, SMB.) |
Consistency model | Eventual consistency and asynchronous replication for Global consistency. Strong read-after-write within Object Stores. | ECS is strong consistency globally and locally. ECS is also asynchronous replication. |
Global Redundancy | Globally redundant by using ObjectScale Replication (OSR) with no limits on the number of sites. | Replication groups (RG) can span up to 8 virtual data centers (VDC). |
Local Redundancy | Reed Solomon erasure coding scheme (officially support 12+4) | Reed Solomon erasure coding scheme (12+4 and 10+2) |
Authentication | Local management user, Active Directory, LDAP, and IAM authentication methods. | Local management use, Local object user, Active Directory, LDAP, Keystone, and IAM authentication methods. |
Security | Active Directory, LDAP, and IAM authentication methods | Active Directory, LDAP, Keystone, and IAM authentication methods |
Data Integrity | Checksums (MD5) | Checksums (MD5) |
Multi-tenancy | ObjectScale uses account and object store for multiple tenants. | ECS uses namespace for multiple tenants. |
Serviceability | Customer-deployable, customer-upgrade, professional services | Professional Services for upgrades, migrations |
Licensing | Subscription | Perpetual |
The Dell ObjectScale solution empowers organizations by providing an adaptable platform for deploying and managing enterprise-grade object storage. This advanced system is designed as a distributed architecture, establishing a robust foundation for scalability across all nodes and ensuring unparalleled availability.
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