Get more value from your data with an easy-to-deploy, high-performance data experience, delivering real-time analytics on an all-flash distributed platform.
Unify your hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystems with Pure for effortless private and public cloud data and application mobility that lets you run applications anywhere.
Modernise your private cloud and build seamless multicloud mobility with flexible, effortless, cost-effective storage.
The threat and costs of a data breach can be devastating. It’s time to say good-bye to siloed legacy solutions and introduce your organisation to modern data protection.
With millions spent annually to guard entry points to data, many still underestimate the strategic value of augmenting data protection. Pure FlashBlade® delivers solutions to support ransomware recovery.
Rely on a backup architecture that’s fast enough to back up and restore data when it matters most, yet big enough to consolidate your data silos—including your backup appliances.
Forget about expensive upgrade cycles, disruptive downtime, and rebuys of TBs you already own. The Evergreen Storage™ subscription model offers seamless, rapid upgrades and expansion, without disruption.
Get storage as a service (STaaS) for on-premises and public cloud. Efficiently operate a hybrid cloud by unifying your environment with one subscription and one set of storage services.
Pure Cloud Block Store™ delivers seamless data mobility, resilience, and a consistent experience—no matter where your data lives.
Government doesn’t have to be slow, especially when you can get the performance and power of the world’s most innovative flash storage solution.
Data is critical to delivering higher quality, integrated care. Implement Pure solutions to achieve efficiencies of care delivery, lower costs, and eliminate data silos and migrations.
Only Pure Storage delivers a modern data experience for MSPs that want to stand out in today’s competitive marketplace.
Deliver storage as a service for containers. Pure Service Orchestrator™ gives developers the agility of public cloud with the reliability and security of on-premises infrastructure.
Get a fast, resilient, simple-to-manage, and easily scalable all-flash platform for your virtual desktop infrastructure.
Pure FlashArray//C is the first all-QLC flash storage array delivering NVMe performance, hyper-consolidation, and simplified management for capacity-oriented workloads.
From entry-level to enterprise applications, accelerate business results with your most critical data. FlashArray//X delivers a modern experience for Tier 0 and Tier 1 workloads.
Pure FlashBlade is the industry's most advanced solution delivering native scale-out file and object storage.
FlashStack™ combines compute, network, and storage to provide a modern infrastructure platform for business-critical applications, DevOps, and analytics. IDC calculates organisations can achieve ROI of 431% over five years.
Escape the limits of legacy infrastructure complexities and DIY solutions. Get the time-to-insight that data-driven innovators need from AIRI®, the industry’s first, full-stack AI-ready infrastructure.
Get storage as a service (STaaS) for on-premises and public cloud. Efficiently operate a hybrid cloud by unifying your environment with one subscription and one set of storage services.
Pure1® changes everything, giving you workload and capacity planning, analytics, tech support, and more. Experience self-driving storage with full-stack, AI-powered data-storage management and monitoring.
Purity gives you the agility you need. Pure Storage is committed to making every bit of your organisation's data available—in the most insightful way possible—so you can take informed action.
Forget about expensive upgrade cycles, disruptive downtime, and rebuys of TBs you already own. The Evergreen Storage™ subscription model offers seamless, rapid upgrades and expansion, without disruption.
Pure Cloud Block Store™ delivers seamless data mobility, resilience, and a consistent experience—no matter where your data lives.
Embrace the future of cloud and data flexibility with the Modern Data Experience.
Sort by industry, business case, and product to learn how organisations across geographies are using Pure products.
Support that’s focused on you. Find solutions for potential issues before they become problems.
Speed time to benefit and accelerate your Modern Data Experience journey with help from experts from Pure.
Get full access to our complete library of e-books, analyst reports, white papers, and more.
Pure is redefining the storage experience and empowering innovators by simplifying how people consume and interact with data.
See the latest announcements, analyst reports, awards, and news coverage on Pure and the storage market.
Find financial information, corporate governance details, stock information, and investor resources.
Step forward. Be you. Pure Storage is where we build the future. It’s where we change industries. It’s where we don’t question the status quo, we erase it.
Right now, you’ll find us online—at our own events and other industry events.
Get the latest perspective and technical information from the great minds at Pure.
Learn about everything modern data storage, from flash to hybrid cloud, QLC, and beyond.
Our channel partners have the technology and solutions to drive faster, smarter, and more innovative business, helping customers achieve results that were previously unimaginable.
Pure's TAP Program enables leading vendors to build pre-tested joint solutions that span AI, analytics, cloud, modern data protection, and much more.
Pure works with innovative managed service providers to simplify and power infrastructure, hybrid and multicloud solutions, and complex IT services.
Hybrid Storage: What It Is and How It Stacks Up to Other Storage Systems
What Is Hybrid Storage?
Hybrid storage describes storage systems that are designed with a blend of flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) and mechanical hard-disk drives (HDDs) in an effort to provide high performance at an affordable price.
From its benefits to how it matches up with other storage options, this guide provides everything you need to know about hybrid storage.
HDDs vs. SDDs
HDDs use magnetically coated, rapidly rotating disks for persistent data storage. Typical HDD performance falls within the range of 55-180 IOPS. SSDs use semiconductor cells to store data persistently. Also known as flash memory, SSDs are significantly faster than HDDs, with performance in the range of 3,000-40,000 IOPS.
For decades, mechanical HDDs have been the most common form of data storage for everything from home computers to enterprise-level direct-attached storage (DAS) devices, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, and storage area networks (SANs).
While SSDs have been around for a long time, cost has been the primary factor slowing widespread adoption. The decision between HDDs and SSDs has traditionally been one of balancing cost with performance.
What are Solid-state Hybrid Drives? (SSHDs)
SSHDs combine the traditional magnetic drives of HDDs with the flash memory of SSDs into a single drive. The idea is to offset the cost of flash memory by relying on an HDD to meet capacity requirements.
SSHDs are also less complicated to manage than installing both an HDD and an SSD within the same system. Hybrid drives monitor data as it’s being read from the hard drive and cache the most accessed pieces of data in the NAND flash memory. Any data stored on the SSD will be served much faster, meaning your most essential files and applications will have SSD-levels of performance.
As the system learns the user’s behavior, the data that’s stored on the SSD will change over time. If certain files or data increase in usage, it will switch out other data for use by the SSD. When you first install an SSHD, you most likely won’t see a performance improvement. The drive takes time to learn the user’s behavior.
Test Drive FlashArray//X
Work in a self-service environment to experience the management of a Pure FlashArray™//X. Explore advanced features, including snapshots, replication, ActiveCluster, and even VMware integration.
Hybrid Storage vs. SSD
So how do SSHDs stack up against SSDs? Because SSDs have superior read and write times than HDDs, SSHDs will always be limited by their HDD components. For the data that doesn’t get prioritized by flash memory, performance will only be that of an HDD.
Why Use Pure All-flash Arrays vs. Hybrid Flash Arrays?
At the enterprise level, the benefits of these various storage options can be scaled up and defined as an “array.” Many of the same principles from the data storage applications above apply. To summarize:
All-flash arrays use non-volatile, flash-only SSDs for data storage. With no moving parts and data that wouldn’t be affected by a power outage, they provide the best performance for an organisation’s data center.
While IT managers may have previously been concerned about the cost of using an all-flash system, the price of high-capacity SSDs is coming down steadily. In return, you get a reduced form factor, faster access to data, and employee-critical applications, while also producing less heat and using less electricity.
Hybrid flash arrays use a mixture of HDDs and SSDs to provide a boost in performance compared to that of a traditional HDD array. Adding a small number of SSDs to make a hybrid storage array will provide a performance increase over HDDs alone. The SSDs work to move frequently accessed data into the faster flash memory.
There are concerns about hybrid storage, including access speed and latency, as well as fears about security, compliance, and data portability. There is no substitute for the performance an all-flash array can provide.
Pure Storage® offers higher performance, capacity, and agility at a lower cost than hybrid storage and HDDs. All-flash arrays (AFAs) are not only revolutionising storage with cloud-like application, consolidation, and agility, they’re also usually the more economical choice. Check out FlashArray//C to see how Pure delivers hybrid economics with SSD performance.
