Managing unstructured data in a modern and efficient way is the key to being able to derive business value from your data, not to mention keeping your business safe from malicious attacks and data breaches. However, as much as 80% of unstructured data remains dark, and can’t be used to provide the edge you need to grow your business in today’s competitive environment. Given the risks from a growing number of security threats, especially with file-based ransomware attacks being the most pervasive, if you don’t have the right insights about your data, you can’t know if it’s been tampered with or exposed.
Scale-out file management solutions based on the NFS and SMB protocols remain the popular choice for a wide range of workloads, including big data analytics, AI/ML, and more. The best scale-out file system solutions aim to do more than simply store data. They deliver a balance across powerful data management services with massive hybrid cloud scalability and seamless data mobility, superior storage efficiency, and flexible licensing options.
Another foundational solution component is robust cybersecurity—not just to keep critical data protected against the latest emerging threats, but also to deliver the insights and capabilities needed to respond and recover quickly enough to minimize disruption to the business.
Looking to the future, demand for scale-out file systems to also support object storage is growing due to the great economic and administrative benefits delivered by the cloud. Data and workload mobility across on-premises and cloud deployments is also an emerging requirement.
Many vendors claim they offer these capabilities, which makes identifying the right scale-out file system solution for your environment extremely challenging.
GigaOm Radar Report for Enterprise Scale-Out File Systems
To provide IT professionals with insights into the top file management solutions available, the GigaOm Radar for Enterprise Scale-Out File Systems reviews leading solutions with a strong focus on flexibility, data services, and features to improve security and data protection. Scalability and the ability to deploy the same service in different environments are also considered to be strong differentiators.
Cohesity ranked as an Outperformer
Designed with security, manageability, and scale, Cohesity SmartFiles optimizes costs and efficiency for unstructured data with next-level software-defined file and object services for the hybrid cloud.
GigaOm rated Cohesity among the top four vendors in the industry and as an Outperformer among 13 scale-out files systems solution providers. Cohesity maintains its strong position as an Outperformer since the last edition of the report in 2022.
Exceptional in data security and management
In the report, SmartFiles was rated as Exceptional for its outstanding focus and execution across six evaluation metrics, including Security, Scalability, Efficiency, Flexibility, Usability, and System Lifespan.
According to GigaOm, “Cohesity’s feature set has significantly increased with major improvements in security (notably ransomware threat detection) and data management. The solution benefits from a unique positioning thanks to the convergence of security, data management, and data protection, making it optimally suited to cover a broad range of use cases and enterprise requirements.” GigaOm based its remarks on multiple capabilities, several of which are described below:
- Ransomware protection: SmartFiles provides at-a-glance data about its environmental health, including the security posture. ML-based early detection of attacks is achieved by monitoring data changes and comparing them against normal patterns (using several metrics) and measuring abnormal activity against the usual activity baseline. Ransomware protection is extended with Cohesity FortKnox, a SaaS data isolation and recovery solution, that provides an additional layer of protection against ransomware for secure, virtual air-gapped, and immutable copies of data in a Cohesity-managed cloud vault. Other notable features include strong zero-trust multifactor authentication (MFA), and quorum-based approval for sensitive actions in the environment, such as changing protection policies and invoking recoveries.
- Data management: A key differentiator for Cohesity is its extensive series of features aimed at simplifying data security, protection, mobility, and governance for files and objects. Intelligent policy-based management and automation affirm efficient placement, streamlined compliance, and secure protection of volumes of data.
- Deployment flexibility: SmartFiles can be deployed at the edge, on single virtualized nodes, in the public cloud, and in large on-premises scale-out systems. This large, distributed infrastructure can be centrally managed by a singular UI (i.e., Cohesity Helios).
About the GigaOm’s Radar for Enterprise Scale-Out File Systems
The GigaOm Radar report is a forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
For a better understanding of the market and vendor positioning, GigaOm assesses how well solutions for enterprise scale-out file systems are positioned to serve specific market segments. This radar covers enterprise scale-out file storage vendors and equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements.
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