Post by Eric Slack (thank you)
Cloud storage infrastructures today are often made up of a grid of modules or nodes, each with storage and compute power in a single chassis. This ‘scale-out’ architecture can enable data centers to better meet capacity and performance needs as these cloud environments expand, compared with more monolithic ‘scale-up’ storage systems implemented in a traditional SAN environment. This type of architecture can also be implemented with commodity or off-the-shelf hardware, instead of purpose built solutions, which helps to keep costs down.
When these scale-out storage nodes (often server hardware with internal disk drives) are filled to capacity, whether implemented that way or after hard disk drives (HDDs) have been added, then expansion requires more nodes. What this means is having to find more rack space in the data center, just to add more storage capacity.
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