This IBM® Redbooks® publication introduces and describes the IBM Elastic Storage® Server 5000 (ESS 5000) as a scalable, high-performance data and file management solution. The solution is built on proven IBM Spectrum® Scale technology, formerly IBM General Parallel File System (IBM GPFS). ESS is a modern implementation of software-defined storage, making it easier for you to deploy fast, highly scalable storage for AI and big data. With the lightning-fast NVMe storage technology and industry-leading file management capabilities of IBM Spectrum Scale, the ESS 3000 and ESS 5000 nodes can grow to over YB scalability and can be integrated into a federated global storage system. By consolidating storage requirements from the edge to the core data center — including kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift — IBM ESS can reduce inefficiency, lower acquisition costs, simplify storage management, eliminate data silos, support multiple demanding workloads, and deliver high performance throughout your organization. This book provides a technical overview of the ESS 5000 solution and helps you to plan the installation of the environment. We also explain the use cases where we believe it fits best. Our goal is to position this book as the starting point document for customers that would use the ESS 5000 as part of their IBM Spectrum Scale setups. This book is targeted toward technical professionals (consultants, technical support staff, IT Architects, and IT Specialists) who are responsible for delivering cost-effective storage solutions with ESS 5000.