@hbaltazar451 clarifies “all-flash” vs. “hybrid” storage array use cases

It’s easy to love Henry Baltazar’s work at 451 Research.  He’s technically deep, he doesn’t confuse technology and business, and he speaks his mind.  I always enjoy his thinking.

In July he put out a report “Is it Time to Go All-In on All-Flash Arrays” discussing the pros and cons of all-flash storage arrays as opposed to “hybrid” systems where, essentially, the flash component acts like an accelerator or cache (although vendors of hybrid systems vigorously deny that their systems employ flash as “mere” cache, the differences seem like shallow semantics).

Baltazar suggests that the “all-flash” and “hybrid” systems are actually two use cases: “all-flash” is “performance” and “hybrid” (especially with a SATA/SAS backend) is “value”.  Makes sense.

In the all-flash category, he distinguishes between “high-end” vendors who go all-out for perofmrnace (IOPS and latency) and “midrange” vendors (like our company SolidFire) who aim to build workalike systems (albeit at a much higher performance level) for existing SANs.  Again, a valid distinction (although the term “midrange” for our guys stings :-)).

Worth a read, although unfortunately you need a 451 subscription to do so.