Software Defined Storage (SDS) is when storage systems are virtualized and the controls are separated from the data that is actually stored. This allows stored elements to be moved around and adapted according to what is needed. Open source has found major foothold in this sector of IT since it allows users to avoid being locked in to a single vendor’s services. Openstack’s Cinder and Swift, Ceph, and GlusterFS are just a few of the open source SDS solutions that have arisen. This is a technology that is still emerging, and IDC expects SDS to be the fastest growing storage segment for 2015, so it is likely we will see some major developments in open source SDS in the year to come.
