The VAST Element Store defines how VAST’s data platform 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.