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The future of Scality RING: How a good thing is getting even better

To deliver the ideal solution for Scality customers’ unique needs, we continually work to optimize RING, our flagship scale-out file and object storage solution. The recent roll-out of RING9 is the latest generation of software for unbreakable hybrid-cloud data storage. 

RING9 smartly leverages flash and HDD  storage management for optimal performance as well as greater efficiency and adaptability. Cloud-native monitoring and administration provide seamless and painless integration — for example, the integration with Veeam and vCloud Director enables IT teams to build and run a modern hybrid-cloud data storage infrastructure with higher performance and efficiency.

All of these changes are being made in the spirit of bringing our customers and partners the features they need for a truly modern data storage and protection strategy. 

The evolution of RING

RING9 focuses on three pillars: performance, observability, and security. To that end, updates made in RING9 include the following: 

Read latency predictability: Complementary to deferred writes, previously available read latency predictability allows RING to strengthen its position as a real-time storage solution for stringent use cases where time to first byte is key, such as real-time video streaming or AI/ML use cases. Hardware ages or fails — this is a reality our customers and their applications shouldn’t have to concern themselves with. Read latency performance uses smart algorithms to identify any risk in serving data in real time and takes preemptive steps to work around failing hardware components.

Storage accelerator for scale-out file service (SOFS): RING9 implements a fast buffer to address the issues around massive file ingestions and data rewrites. It can sustain read and write peaks with lower latencies compared to long-term storage. Storage accelerators now position RING as a de facto tier-1 storage solution, greatly simplifying storage architectures required for PACS medical archives, for example, or media use cases that typically need to leverage multiple technologies.

Object S3 in RING9 has undergone major changes to improve per bucket and S3 service-wide performance. Taking better advantage of available hardware resources available allows us to essentially provide these enhancements “free of charge” to our existing customers. Our S3 connector — which provides market-leading IAM support — coupled with a large subset of AWS-compatible features such as Object Lock, lifecycle expiration, active-active CRR and S3-SSE and many more, leads the market for enterprise and service providers today. 

Observability in RING9 has gone through the largest overhaul since the solution’s inception. It leverages modern technology stacks, such as Prometheus and AlertManager, and is complemented by thousands of new KPIs and metrics. RING9 customers will have the ability to monitor and control all aspects of their RING storage with a fully integrated solution. Comprehensive performance and health dashboards, with the option to trigger alerts pointing specifically where attention is required, are also offered. The integration abilities give customers the option to integrate RING monitoring into their current IT infrastructure management.

Security in RING9 is unparalleled with its integration into core user management and role-based access for all administration interfaces of the solution. We’ve also made it easier to enforce common user identity management practices and implement multifactor authentication. Simple integration with customers’ existing identity providers through SAMLv2 is made possible. RING administration, data immutability through Object Lock or SOFS Volume Protection, and rock-solid protection of your data are at the core of Scality’s DNA.

The road ahead for Scality RING

IT teams must find ways to solve issues with enterprise data management and storage in the hybrid cloud as they adopt today’s stack architecture. Scality RING9 introduces a significant change to the storage sector as a whole. With support for Prometheus and Elastic Cloud, RING9 seamlessly integrates into the monitoring and observability ecosystem of contemporary cloud-based data centers. The target market and use case workloads for RING are expanded even further into the high-performance space by RING9.

But we’re not done here. We are always upgrading our products and looking for additional ways to improve them. Input from our customers and partners is welcome and encouraged in this process. Such feedback ensures the delivery of a solution with best-in-class features and capabilities that meet real-world needs and enable organizations to achieve their mission-critical objectives. 


Are you a current customer who wants to share your thoughts? We love feedback. Email sales@scality.com. Or come say hello at any of our upcoming events!

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