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:

  1. Large on-prem big data clusters migrating from HDFS.
  2. You want S3 APIs but need strong Hadoop integration.
  3. You want to avoid vendor lock-in and grow cost-effectively on commodity hardware.
  4. You’re building a private or hybrid cloud with other open-source tools.
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