Object storage software startup Scality introduced version 5.0 of its RING software for software-defined storage at VMworld yesterday. The software has been given a number of enhancements, with Scality claiming its 95 percent faster at file operations and random IO. However, the big news is that RING now supports VM storage capabilities.

For those unfamiliar with Scality, it’s software is aimed at large enterprise and service providers, counting the Los Alamos National Labs among its customers, plus many media and entertainment firms. RING can be used for enterprise NAS, file sync, and share and backup operations. It’s also able to protect data itself, and can be used as a backup target resource for third-party suppliers like Veeam and others.

Rearding the new update, RING 5.0 adds VMware VM-level storage access with Amazon S3 and EBS-like storage for files, objects and VMs. Scality also supports KVM, and has support of OpenStack Cinder to provision VM storage.

Scality says that VMs will be able to access their storage through NFS or VMFS, and it’s “very simple to deploy and maintain [with] no RAID, no LUNS [and] no volumes”.

RING 5.0 also supports thin provisioning and has support for Flash, SSDs and caching software. Support for VASA and VAAI (minus NFS) will arrive in 2015, with VVOLs support coming sometime after that. Scality also plans a vCenter plugin for VASA and VAAI so admin staff can easily configure it. According to Scality, “Performance matches EBS at 200 IOPS per VM (bursts to 3,000 IOPS) and scales out linearly to hundreds of thousands of VMs.”

According to Scality, all-flash arrays and VM storage appliances are designed to address different market segments, but RING provides unified storage encompassing both methods, which equates to “tremendous economies of scale”. Scality claims that RING’s cost per terabyte is “10X less than AFA (all-flash arrays)”, although that’s to be expected because it uses traditional disks to store data. Just don’t expect it to match the performance of an all-flash array.

According to 451 Research vice president Simon Robinson, the release of RING 5.0 means that Scality finally lives up to the now-ubiquitous “software-defined” label.

“By offering a straight software play that supports multiple, enterprise-level workloads — supporting file, object and now VM-level access — on a single platform, Scality offers one of the most complete software-defined storage platforms we have seen to date,” said Robinson.

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