Object storage or object-based storage is a data storage architecture that handles large amounts of unstructured data as distinct units or objects. Object storage solutions distinguish these objects or blobs using metadata and custom identifiers, which are crucial for locating and accessing each data unit or object. Maintaining comprehensive metadata for every file allows these solutions to simplify data storage, eliminate hierarchical folder-level storage, and organize files within a flat address space called a storage pool.
The best object storage solutions offer unmatched scalability for storing large data volumes, like terabytes and petabytes, making them more scalable than traditional and block storage software for archiving and backup purposes. Organizations use object storage software to store videos, network logs, photos, emails, sensor data, audio files, and other structured and unstructured data on-premises or in the cloud. This data may live across multiple physical devices, but users can access it from a single virtual data storage repository. Media, healthcare, e-commerce, finance, and technology companies use object storage vendors for cloud-native applications, distributed content management, big data analytics, rich media storage, Internet of Things (IoT), backup, and archiving purposes.
Modern companies rely on top-class object storage providers because of scale-out architecture, flexible data protection, scalability, high sequential throughput performance, searchability, and cost efficiency.
Object storage systems can store beyond exabytes of data, making them ideal for businesses looking to store a growing amount of unstructured data at affordable costs. Moreover, scale-out architecture allows easy expansion of storage capacity by adding more nodes to the cluster. Users can also add multiple metadata tags for each object search and retrieval. Object storage tools can also stream files in parallel over multiple pipes, resulting in high sequential throughput. Plus, they use erasure coding to safeguard data by spreading redundant information across various storage locations.
To qualify for inclusion in the Object Storage category, a product must:
- Store unstructured data and relevant metadata
- Facilitate data retrieval through APIs or HTTP/HTTPS
- Be offered by cloud service providers
