Comparison with Other Storage Technologies
This document provides a high-level comparison of Apache Ozone with other storage technologies.
Open Source Scale-out Storage Comparison
Ozone is most often compared against other open source storage systems.
| Tech | Type | Consistency | Scale | Big Data Integration | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ozone | Object / File | Strong | Exabyte scale, tens of billions keys | Native | Apache 2.0 | Modern Hadoop-native object store with S3 API |
| HDFS | File | Strong | PBs, billions files | Native | Apache 2.0 | Classic Hadoop FS, no S3 API, tight Hadoop integration |
| Ceph | Object / Block / File | Tunable / Eventual | Multi-PB, very large | Via S3 Gateway/CephFS | LGPLv2.1 / Ceph Foundation | General-purpose: underlying RADOS (object), RGW (object), CephFS (file) |
| MinIO | Object | Strong | Petabyte scale | Via S3 connectors | AGPLv3 (SSPL-like) | Cloud-native S3 API, lightweight, fast, no FS semantics |
| Lustre | Parallel File (POSIX) | Strong | PB scale, HPC | None | GPLv2 | HPC clusters, high-throughput parallel file system |
| GlusterFS | File (POSIX) | Eventually consistent | Large, multi-PB | None | GPLv3 | General-purpose scale-out distributed file storage |
| OpenStack Swift | Object | Eventual | Large, multi-PB | Via connectors | Apache 2.0 | S3-like multi-tenant object storage for private clouds |
Ozone shines when users are in need of an Apache licensed, strongly consistent storage system that can scale to billions of keys/files and hundreds of PBs to EBs.
Proprietary Scale-Out Storage Comparison
| Tech | Type | Consistency | Scale | Big Data Integration | Performance Focus | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isilon (Dell PowerScale) | File (Scale-Out NAS) | Strong | PBs, billions of files | Indirect | High throughput, good mixed IO | Enterprise NAS, POSIX compliant, good for mixed workloads, backup, analytics |
| VAST | File / Object | Strong | PBs | Yes, AI workloads | Ultra-low latency, all-flash NVMe | All-flash, NFS/S3, great for AI/ML and large unstructured datasets |
| WEKA | Parallel File | Strong | PBs | HPC, AI | Ultra-low latency, high IOPS | High-performance file, GPU clusters, NFS/SMB/S3 |
| Spectrum Scale (GPFS) | File (POSIX) | Strong | PBs | HPC, AI | High throughput, scale-out metadata | IBM, used in HPC/AI, policy tiering, good POSIX compliance |
| Scality | Object | Strong | PBs | Some | Good throughput for large objects | Enterprise S3 API, multi-region, backup archives, hybrid cloud |
| Cloudian | Object | Strong | PBs | Some | Good throughput for backup/archive | S3-compatible object storage, ransomware protection, hybrid cloud |
The proprietary systems offer enterprise-grade quality, but they often require proprietary or certified hardware. Ozone shines when users look for commodity hardware, open systems and embrace the vibrant Apache big data open source community.
Cloud-Native Object Storage Comparison
| Tech | Type | Consistency | Scale | Big Data Integration | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS S3 | Object | Strong | Exabyte+ | Native to cloud ecosystem | The de-facto standard for object storage; massive durability, S3 API leader |
| Azure ABFS | File/Object (Data Lake Storage) | Strong | Exabyte+ | Azure-native | HDFS-like semantics for Spark/Hadoop; optimized for analytics |
| Google GCS | Object | Strong | Exabyte+ | Native to cloud ecosystem | Globally distributed; strong consistency; well-integrated with BigQuery |
| OCI Object Storage | Object | Strong | Exabyte+ | Via S3 API & native services | Oracle’s S3-compatible storage; integrates with OCI Data Flow |
| Alibaba OSS | Object | Strong | Exabyte+ | Via S3 API & native services | S3-compatible, huge China/APAC footprint |
| IBM Cloud Object Storage | Object | Strong | Exabyte+ | Via S3 API & native services | S3-compatible, geo-dispersed erasure coding for durability |
These cloud storage offerings are only available from their respective public cloud vendors. In contrast, Ozone runs on-prem or in your private cloud, giving you full control.
Summary
In summary, Ozone is the best fit in the following scenarios:
- Large on-prem big data clusters migrating from HDFS.
- You want S3 APIs but need strong Hadoop integration.
- You want to avoid vendor lock-in and grow cost-effectively on commodity hardware.
- You’re building a private or hybrid cloud with other open-source tools.