Software-defined storage (SDS) is not the end of hardware warns Consultant and Wikibon Analyst Scott Lowe in “Software defined Storage Does Not Mean the End of Hardware Costs“. Actually, most vendors, including Scale Computing, Nutanix and SimpliVity, only offer SDS either as part of their own appliances, and those that offer only the software, like Nexanta, provide it with a hardware compatibility list of fully certified configurations and reference architectures.

The issue, he writes, is that SDS does not replace quality in the underlying hardware, “You get what you pay for” still applies, and companies that go with the lowest cost hardware cannot expect good performance or longevity. Also, SDS vendors cannot be expected to support their software on every different kind of hardware in the market. That would put their support staff in an impossible position.

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