2025-26 Top 5 Modern SDS Block Storage Solutions

Wendt This market report, published on November 5, 2024, was written by Jerome M. Wendt, president and founder, Data Center Intelligence Group LLC (DCIG).

2025-26 DCIG TOP 5 Modern SDS Block Storage Solutions Report Now Available

DCIG announced the availability of its 2025-26 DCIG Top 5 Modern SDS Block Storage Solutions Report. This report provides guidance on the DCIG TOP 5 SDS block storage solutions that organizations with modern IT infrastructures should consider for deployment into these environments. These modern IT environments typically use Linux KVM VMs, are cloud-based, and have come into existence in the last decade.

SDS block storage solutions have come of age. Sometimes viewed in the past as too hard, too risky, or unproven, those days are over. Rather, any enterprises that still view SDS block storage solutions through this lens do themselves a disservice.

SDS block storage solution providers have made significant strides to mitigate the risk and perceived stigma associated with deploying their solutions into production environments.

For instance, these providers now:

Certify their SDS block storage solution with multiple leading applications, databases, hypervisors, and operating systems.
Make their SDS block storage software available in multiple clouds.
Offer ample evidence and proof points to demonstrate their SDS block storage solution performs as well or better than comparable storage appliances from hardware providers.
Offer enterprise levels of upfront and ongoing technical support and customer training to ease deployments and ensure successful ongoing operations.

These and other factors should give organizations the assurance they need to confidently move forward with deploying SDS block storage solutions. They also help explain why researchers forecast the market for SDS storage solutions will grow significantly. Two research firms forecast an increase in the SDS market from about $50+ billion in 2024 to as high as $260+ billion by 2029.

Its SDS block storage’s other features that should contribute to its accelerated growth and adoption in the coming years. For instance, depending on the SDS block storage solution, organizations obtain new flexibility to virtualize multiple types of storage. Storage choices may range from storage arrays to disk drives available in x86 server hardware to cloud block storage.

SDS block storage solutions also help simplify the tasks associated with managing environments with block storage networking protocols. This simplification can range from migrating data between systems to centralizing the volume management of the virtualized storage. It may also alleviate complex zoning, LUN masking, and other storage networking tasks commonly associated with managing block storage environments.

Drivers for modern SDS block storage adoption
DCIG identified over 20 different enterprise SDS block storage solutions that organizations could deploy in various ways. Deployment options could include software for deployment on-premises, in the cloud, a preconfigured hardware appliance, or a combination of these.

Some providers also partner with hardware OEMs so that organizations may order appliances from their preferred OEM. A few providers even make IaaS available as an option. If electing to use IaaS, the provider manages the software after an enterprise deploys it.

Organizations increasingly encounter new use cases that demand the use of storage solutions other than traditional storage hardware appliances.

While edge locations may be the 1st that come to mind, organizations with modern IT infrastructures possess additional business drivers for adopting SDS block storage solutions:

Common storage management experience. Deploying SDS block storage solutions in the cloud immediately emerges as a common use case. Organizations may want to have the same block storage management experience both on-premises and in the cloud.
Many of the SDS block storage solutions meet many if not all operational, production requirements. This software may offer features such as replication, snapshots, data reduction, and data migration.
Additionally, some organizations seek a more robust hybrid cloud experience. Some SDS block storage solutions give them the flexibility to host the same workloads both on-premises and in the cloud. In some cases, they can even move the workloads back and forth between on-premises and the cloud.
Identifying a VMware vSAN alternative. Broadcom has further incentivized enterprises to explore alternative SDS block storage options. In December 2023, Broadcom announced that vSAN had become part of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). As a result, organizations may no longer acquire vSAN as a standalone solution. This may prompt existing vSAN clients to identify a new SDS block storage solution.
Cybersecurity and ransomware concerns. Organizations have increased concerns about cybersecurity attacks in general and ransomware attacks specifically. To address these concerns, DCIG evaluated the various cybersecurity capabilities of each SDS block storage solution.

DCIG used the National Institute of Science and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework to focus its research in this area. Using these guidelines, it evaluated how well each SDS block-based storage solution delivered on the NIST’s five cybersecurity categories: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover.

DCIG top 5 for modern SDS block storage adoptions
In preparing this report, DCIG formally evaluated over 20 different SDS block storage solutions based on multiple different features and capabilities.

The general categories under which the features of these SDS block storage solutions fell included: