What Does Software-Defined Storage Mean?
Software-defined storage (SDS) is the process of using software-based techniques to create, deploy and manage storage resources and infrastructure. It enables abstracting or separating storage services from hardware devices by using software or programmatic access to extract and manipulate storage resources.
Techopedia Explains Software-Defined Storage
SDS primarily helps to eliminate the need for hardware in storage infrastructure. It works much like storage virtualization, where all storage resources are provisioned and managed through a storage-specific hypervisor. The abstraction of storage from hardware eliminates the need to depend on hardware constraints in allocating storage to end-users and/or systems.
With SDS, the whole storage infrastructure is conceived as a composite storage pool that’s managed and accessed through software. SDS also bypasses or doesn’t require the storage management firmware on storage infrastructure and works as storage manager on top of all storage resources. Moreover, in a SDS-enabled/powered storage infrastructure, the storage is provisioned automatically through predefined policies.
