The VAST Element Store defines how VAST Universal StorageUniversal Storage is a single storage system that is fast enough for primary storage, scalable enough for huge datasets and affordable enough to use for the full range of a customers data, thus eliminating the tyranny of tiers. Systems store files and objects and the metadata that describes them.
The Element Store is neither a traditional file system nor an object store, abstracting both to create an abstraction that serves both the hierarchical presentation of a file system and the flat presentation of an object store.
This abstraction allows users to access the same element as a file over NFS with one application and as an S3 object when using more modern “cloud-native” applications.