What is hybrid storage?
Hybrid storage is a storage strategy that blends the use of flash storage, solid state drives (SSDs) and mechanical disk drives in order to provide the optimal combination of cost and performance for a given set of workloads. A hybrid storage approach enables a myriad set of different applications and use cases to have the storage performance they need at the right price point provided by the hybrid storage platform.
One of the benefits of hybrid storage is that it enables organizations to leverage high performance storage – such as flash drives or SSDs – when it is needed. Organizations can determine whether data is hot, warm or cold and then choose the most appropriate storage medium for the application. This enables businesses to craft a plan about how data will be used and when to achieve the greatest impact and efficiency.
Hybrid storage can sometimes be implemented in a single storage system. This offers users a single point of accountability for hardware and software issues. This can be important when businesses are looking for greater efficiency when data volumes are increasing and storing everything on flash storage can be too expensive.