Without Universal Storage, every workload lands in its own silo: block arrays for VMs, bolt-on systems for containers, and object stores for the unstructured data behind multi-modal AI. The result is fragmented storage infrastructure that's expensive to scale and hard to govern.
VAST Data Universal Storage
Collapse Storage Silos with VAST Universal Storage
Universal Storage combines block, file, and object onto one unified AI OS. Run VMs, containers, and AI in a single namespace to fuel data center modernization, enhancing manageability, scalability, and affordability.
The Enterprise Challenge
Outgrowing Legacy Data Infrastructure
Storage Silos
For decades, IT has built and maintained three separate storage silos, each for a specific data type and use case. Managing them independently adds cost, complexity, and a wider attack surface.
Wasted Capacity
One silo fills up (block) while another sits 40% empty (file), and that stranded capacity can't be shared across systems, so IT overbuys to stay ahead of business demand.
Performance vs Cost Tradeoff
Tiering storage forces a choice: high-performance, expensive flash for mission-critical workloads, and less expensive HDDs for the rest. Creating silos, performance inconsistencies, and requiring data migration.
And VAST is remarkable for the AI storage solution for enterprises. We want to provide our customers that high throughput, reliable, scalable infrastructure, not just on the cloud level, but on the storage level as well.
Laurelle Roseman
VP of Channel & Alliances, Nebius
Why Now
The Inflection Point for Storage
For years, enterprises relied on buying separate storage systems for different workloads: block arrays for VMs, scale-out NAS for file, and object stores for archives. To strike a balance between speed and cost, companies were forced to tier data, from high-speed flash to cost-effective disk. Now, AI is pushing data volumes and performance requirements past what these systems can handle.
Universal Storage changes the equation. VAST's Disaggregated, Shared-Everything (DASE) architecture collapses those silos into one all-flash platform that serves block, file, and object from a single namespace. Every workload—VMs, containers, analytics, and AI—draws from the same pool at all-flash speed, with no tiering, no rebalancing, and linear scale that grows without downtime or performance drops.
With these barriers removed, you can modernize without the risk of a rip-and-replace migration. Run existing VMs alongside cloud-native apps, consolidate fragmented systems onto one foundation, and manage it all through a single interface; then grow into AI on the same platform without another storage silo.
The VAST AI Operating System
Unified Storage for the Enterprise
Unlike legacy storage built for one workload at a time, VAST Universal Storage serves block, file, and object from a single all-flash platform. Its Disaggregated Shared-Everything (DASE) architecture lets every workload share one high-performance pool of capacity, eliminating silos, tiering, and overprovisioning.
Consolidate
Consolidate all data and workloads onto a single flash-based system. No copies, no silos, no integration overhead.
Scale
Shared-Everything scalability from terabytes to exabytes. Eliminate metadata bottlenecks, data rebalancing lag, and performance degradation during node failures.
Govern
Access the same data through any protocol. Read files as objects or query tables as files. VAST’s unified security architecture bridges the gap between access models, ensuring consistent permissions.
The Three Pillars of Universal Storage
Breaking Down Legacy Storage Limitations
Unified Data Platform
What is a modern unified data store? It’s an architecture that breaks down the limitations of legacy storage systems that have existed for over 50 years. Traditional controller-based and shared-nothing architectures have forced trade-offs between flexibility, scale, speed, and simplicity; and can’t meet modern workload demands. VAST DataStore replaces individual storage silos and data tiers with a single, AI-optimized platform.
Modern Storage Design
VAST DASE unifies metadata and caching intelligence, offloading both directly to a resilient data persistence layer. Unlike legacy shared-nothing architectures, which depend on dedicated metadata servers or distribute lookups across the compute layer, every VAST CNode can perform horizontal lookups and access data directly, maintaining real-time visibility into the metadata catalog.
Federated Data Access
Distributed teams are forced to copy and sync data across sites, regions, and clouds just to work together; creating stale copies, governance gaps, and workforce delays. VAST DataSpace federates every location into a single shared namespace, so global teams read and write the same data from anywhere with real-time consistency. No copies to reconcile and no silos to cross.
What does DataStore help Enterprises do?
A Universal Storage Platform Engineered for the AI Era
VAST DataStore delivers high-performance, file, object, and block storage on a single platform. It ingests, stores, and serves massive datasets to enterprise workloads at speed; without the tradeoffs customers have come to expect with legacy storage systems.
Unify Data to Accelerate Innovation
Break down legacy silos by managing block, file, and object on a single platform. Harness the capabilities of Universal Storage for analytics, AI, and block workloads to accelerate innovation.
No More Complex Tiering
Eliminate the complexity of tiering across multiple storage systems, each with its own OS, patching, security, and stranded capacity. VAST collapses them onto one platform.
Enterprise-Grade Data Reduction
Global, similarity-based data reduction shrinks your footprint beyond traditional dedupe and compression, more storage on less flash, with no performance penalty.
What does DASE architecture help Enterprises do?
Meet the Storage Architecture for the AI Era
DASE breaks the old trade-offs of storage architecture. It disaggregates capacity from performance and gives every node shared access to all the data. For the first time customers no longer have to compromise between scalability and simplicity, performance and cost, or edge and cloud. Collapse every enterprise workload onto one common platform.
Asymmetric System Scaling
DASE architecture makes it possible to non-disruptively scale from petabytes to exabytes across multiple generations of hardware and use the same architecture in the cloud.
Fault-Tolerant by Design
Deliver more than five 9’s of availability with a stateless compute architecture and 11x data durability, so workloads stay online through hardware failures without data loss.
VAST AI OS by Industry
Universal Storage in Action
The VAST AI Operating System is transforming industries that demand scale, speed, and security.
