Scality RINGvs
MinIO
MinIO: MinIO for S3-compatible object storage with an open source path and no licence fee
Scality RING
Petabyte-scale object storage software on your own hardware
As of 1 September 2026, Scality RING's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. Software-defined object and file storage designed to run on commodity servers at petabyte scale, sold as software rather than an appliance. Softwr lists it under File Storage. Scality RING is made by Scality, available on Linux.
Overview
What Scality RING does
Scality RING is object storage software that turns standard x86 servers into a single distributed storage pool addressable by S3, NFS and SMB. It scales to hundreds of petabytes, uses erasure coding for durability rather than full replication, and supports object locking for immutable retention. Scality also sells ARTESCA, a lighter object store aimed at smaller footprints and backup targets. The distinguishing point is capacity economics at scale with hardware freedom. Because Scality sells software, you choose the server and drive vendor, which means you can rebid the hardware at each refresh instead of being locked to one appliance manufacturer. At the petabyte scale where storage is a material capital line, that supplier leverage is the argument, and it is unavailable from appliance vendors. Buyers are broadcasters, healthcare imaging archives, national laboratories, service providers and large enterprises building backup targets. The trade-off is operational responsibility. Erasure coded distributed storage has failure modes that need understanding, capacity planning has to account for rebuild time on multi-terabyte drives, and a team that expected an appliance experience will find they have bought a system to operate. Pricing is by quote, typically per usable terabyte per year.
What people use it for
- A broadcaster archiving decades of video where hyperscaler storage and egress costs would be prohibitive
- A hospital group holding medical imaging on premises for data residency and retention reasons
- An enterprise building an immutable on premises backup target for Veeam or Commvault with object lock
- A service provider offering S3-compatible storage to its own customers on hardware it controls
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Scality RING.
- Hardware is bought separately, so the software quote understates total cost and the buyer carries the sizing risk if the drive and server specification is wrong.
- Running distributed erasure coded storage requires operations skills, and organisations that expected appliance simplicity end up staffing a storage team they had not budgeted.
- Rebuild times after a drive failure on large capacity disks are measured in hours or days, and capacity planning has to leave headroom for that degraded window.
- Pricing is per usable terabyte and quoted, so cost comparisons against cloud object storage require modelling your own retrieval patterns rather than reading a rate card.
- Small deployments carry a minimum viable node count for erasure coding to work sensibly, which makes the entry footprint larger and less economic than the per-terabyte price implies.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Scality RING
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Scality RINGvsCeph
Ceph: Ceph where you want unified block, file and object storage and have the engineering depth to run it
- Scality RINGvsWasabi
Wasabi: Wasabi if the requirement is cheap cloud object storage rather than on premises capacity
Pricing
What Scality RING costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Scality RING
On request
- Priced per usable terabyte, subscription or perpetual
- Server hardware purchased separately by the customer
- Support tiers quoted separately
- Multi-petabyte deployments standard
Scality ARTESCA
On request
- Lighter object store for smaller footprints
- Priced per usable terabyte
- Commonly deployed as an immutable backup target
Capabilities
Features
S3-compatible object storage
Amazon S3 API compatibility for applications and backup software
File and object access
NFS and SMB access to the same underlying data as objects
Erasure coding
Durability without full replication, reducing raw capacity overhead
Object lock
Immutable retention for ransomware and compliance requirements
Multi-site geodistribution
Data spread across sites with configurable protection
Hardware independence
Runs on commodity x86 servers from the vendor of your choice
ARTESCA
Lighter object store aimed at edge footprints and backup targets
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Do we buy hardware from Scality?
No. RING is software; you buy commodity servers and drives yourself, which is the point for buyers who want to rebid hardware at each refresh.
Is it S3-compatible enough for backup software?
Yes, it is a common object lock target for Veeam, Commvault and Rubrik. Verify the specific S3 features your backup product needs during a proof of concept.
What is ARTESCA?
A lighter object store from the same company, aimed at smaller footprints and backup targets rather than multi-petabyte archives.
Keep looking
Where to go from Scality RING
- Scality RING alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Scality RING pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Scality RING badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All File Storage softwareThe full category
- Best File Storage softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best File Storage software for
Compare Scality RING with
- MinIO
- Ceph
- Storj
- Cloudian
- Cloudflare R2
- IDrive e2
- Tigris
- Panzura
- Nasuni
- VAST Data
- CrashPlan
- TrueNAS
- Google Drive
- Microsoft OneDrive
- Nextcloud
- Zerto
- IDrive
- IDrive e2
Other File Storage software
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Free plan10 researched notesLow cost S3-compatible object storage with egress included up to a multiple of what you store
Free, then $4/mo12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Scality RING, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Scality RING
Scality RING alternatives
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Scality RING pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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Best File Storage software alternatives
Cloud filesystem that streams large media files on demand instead of syncing them
Per member per month plus storageGoogle's consumer cloud storage app, sharing the same 15GB quota as Gmail and Google Photos
Free tier plus paid storage add-onS3-compatible object storage server you run yourself, now under AGPL with a stripped community edition
Open source, no licence feeOpen source distributed storage providing object, block and file from one cluster
Open source, no licence fee