Scality RING
Enterprise-grade scale-out object + file storage software from Scality, built around the RING distributed architecture. Supports full S3 API plus file protocols (NFS, SMB), proven to scale to **100PB+ and hundreds of billions of objects in a single deployment**. Self-hosted (on customer hardware) or bought as integrated appliance bundles (HPE, Dell). Modern variant **RING XP** is purpose-built for AI workloads, achieving microsecond-level latency on 4KB objects via a streamlined AI object storage API.
Definition
Enterprise-grade scale-out object + file storage software from Scality, built around the RING distributed architecture. Supports full S3 API plus file protocols (NFS, SMB), proven to scale to **100PB+ and hundreds of billions of objects in a single deployment**. Self-hosted (on customer hardware) or bought as integrated appliance bundles (HPE, Dell). Modern variant **RING XP** is purpose-built for AI workloads, achieving microsecond-level latency on 4KB objects via a streamlined AI object storage API.
Cloud-native object storage is fine for born-in-cloud workloads but doesn't fit enterprises that need to keep large analytical and AI corpora on-premise (regulatory, latency-to-GPU, cost-at-scale). RING's bet has been the same since 2009: deliver hyperscaler-grade S3 semantics on customer-owned hardware, with 14-nines durability via erasure coding across multiple sites and hardware tiers. The 2026 evolution is RING XP — specifically optimized for "fast object storage for AI" where small-object latency matters as much as bulk throughput.
On-premise S3-compatible storage for regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government), AI training-data stores where GPUs need microsecond-class small-object latency, large-scale backup and disaster-recovery archives (100PB+ retention), media archives with high-churn workloads, and hybrid-cloud deployments where the on-prem RING tier handles the hot/sensitive data and a public-cloud S3 tier handles cold archive.
Recent developments
- RING 9.5 + F5 BIG-IP 17.5 validated reference architecture shipped. Scality + F5 published a tested, repeatable architecture for enterprise S3 deployments with F5 BIG-IP as the front-end traffic management layer for RING 9.5 — covering functional compatibility, performance behavior, and failure handling under multi-tenant + multi-site load. Per Scality solved.com.
- RING XP — 100× faster than S3, 20× faster than S3 Express One Zone on 4KB objects. RING XP delivers microsecond-level small-object latency via the streamlined AI object storage API — positioned explicitly against AWS S3 Express One Zone as the on-prem alternative for AI workloads. Per Scality — RING XP.
- CORE5 cyber-resilience platform. End-to-end ransomware defense layer named CORE5 — Scality's positioning on the "what survives the encryption attack" question that's been driving 2026 enterprise storage procurement. Per scality.com.
- Scality 14-nines durability claim, exceeding AWS S3's published 11-nines. Per Scality's published number, the RING solution targets fourteen-9's, ahead of most other published values including AWS. Per Scality RING.
- HPE Solutions integration. HPE ships RING as a validated on-prem object-storage stack on HPE hardware via the HPE Store. Per HPE Store.