Software-defined storage (SDS) is a marketing term for computer data storage software that defines policy-
based provisioning and management of data storage. The process does not depend on the underlying
hardware and includes a form of storage virtualization to separate the storage hardware from the software
that manages it. A software-defined storage environment may also provide policy management for features
such as data deduplication, replication, thin provisioning, snapshots and backup. Software-defined storage
may be implemented via appliances over a conventional Storage Area Network (SAN), or implemented as
Network-Attached Storage (NAS), or using object-based storage. SDS offers benefits such as improved
system performance, web facilitation, and reducing maintenance cost, that have increased demand for SDS.
