Atmos can be deployed as either a hardware appliance[1] or as software in a virtual environment.

[3][4] Atmos was developed by EMC Corporation and made generally available in November 2008.

[6] At least one of the researchers on a project called OceanStore at the University of California, Berkeley had also worked on Atmos, using an architecture now known as object storage.

[7][8] A second major release in February 2010 added a "GeoProtect" distributed data protection feature, faster processors and denser hard drives.

[10] Atmos can be used as data storage for custom or packaged applications using either a REST or SOAP data API, or more traditional storage interfaces like Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB).