Hybrid storage performance leadership

Performance comparison versus conventional NVRAM+SSD+Disk architecture

Published October 2013

Conventional hybrid storage solutions use NVRAM to cache data before writing to disk, then augment performance with an SSD read cache. While such solutions generally offer acceptable performance for small datasets, they are ultimately limited by the configuration and number of SSDs that can be deployed.

In contrast, a hybrid storage approach can leverage PCIe-based flash to provide better performance. This not only provides direct access to block-level storage and fast read/write caching, but also allows for greater disk capacity per array shelf.

Tolly evaluates the performance of a hybrid storage approach against conventional NVRAM+SSD+Disk Architecture to find that a hybrid storage solution offers up to 700% better performance in block level access tests.