雲端儲存與本地 SSD 儲存：如何為企業成長找到合適的平衡點

You don’t have to choose between speed and scalability. Here’s how to design a storage architecture that delivers both.

Data is the lifeblood of modern business, and how it’s stored directly impacts growth. Enterprises are generating more information than ever, from AI training sets and customer analytics to IoT streams and regulatory archives. With this continued explosion of data, organizations must decided where all their data will live.  

The debate often narrows to two options: cloud storage, with its promise of unlimited scale and flexibility, and on-premises SSDs, prized for performance and control. Yet in reality, most organizations discover that neither approach alone is enough. The storage conversation has evolved beyond “either/or” to a more nuanced balance. Hybrid approaches, which combine cloud elasticity with on-prem SSD speed, are increasingly defining enterprise growth strategies. 

This article explores both sides of the equation, the tradeoffs and how you can design a storage architecture that supports both today’s demands and tomorrow’s ambitions. 

Cloud storage advantages for enterprise environments

Cloud storage has become the default choice for many organizations, particularly those seeking agility and scale. Its advantages are compelling: 

• • • Scalability and elasticity – Cloud platforms allow you to scale capacity on demand. Whether launching a new service or handling seasonal spikes, you can provision storage instantly without waiting for hardware.
    • OpEx vs. CapEx – Instead of large upfront investments in hardware, cloud operates on an operational expense model. This pay-as-you-go approach lowers entry barriers and makes costs more predictable in the short term.
    • Geographic redundancy and disaster recovery – Public cloud providers maintain data centers across regions. You gain built-in redundancy and fast disaster recovery options without replicating their own infrastructure.
    • Reduced management overhead – With cloud, your IT teams outsource much of the infrastructure burden, which means no rack space, power management or hardware refresh cycles to worry about.
    • Access from anywhere – Remote and hybrid workforces can collaborate seamlessly through globally accessible data stores.

For growing enterprises, cloud provides speed, scale and geographic reach that would otherwise take years to replicate on-prem. 

Cloud storage challenges and limitations

In addition to all of its benefits, the cloud has some drawbacks, and organizations that lean on it exclusively often face new headaches: 

• • • Bandwidth constraints and latency – Data-intensive workloads such as AI training, video processing and high-frequency trading require fast, consistent throughput. Even with high-speed links, network latency can limit performance compared to local SSDs.
    • Ongoing costs and budget unpredictability – While cloud avoids upfront CapEx, costs can spiral over time. Egress fees, long-term retention and unpredictable scaling can make cloud expensive over time.
    • Data sovereignty and compliance – Enterprises in regulated sectors must ensure data resides in specific jurisdictions. Not all providers guarantee location control, raising compliance risks.
    • Vendor lock-in – Migrating away from a chosen provider can be costly and complex. Depending on provider-specific APIs, formats and ecosystems can result in unexpected limitations later down the line.
    • Security perceptions – Though cloud providers invest heavily in security, enterprises often worry about losing control over sensitive data. Shared responsibility models can create confusion about who is accountable for breaches or compliance failures.

In short, cloud offers agility and near-infinite scalability, but it also introduces risks that must be managed carefully. 

Read: Storage Disaggregation: How NVMe-oF and CXL Enable Data Center Composability

Performance advantages of on-premises SSD storage

In contrast to the cloud, on-premises SSD storage is the best option for enterprises that prioritize sheer speed and control. Its benefits include:  

• • • Raw performance metrics – SSDs deliver unmatched input/output operations per second (IOPS), throughput and ultra-low latency. It’s hard to beat SSD performance for mission-critical workloads like transactional databases, AI training and real-time analytics.
    • Consistency – Unlike cloud, where performance can fluctuate with network traffic, SSDs provide stable, predictable performance.
    • Control over hardware and configuration – You can tailor hardware and firmware for specific workloads, optimizing performance to a fine degree.
    • Data locality – Processing data close to where it’s generated or consumed reduces latency and supports edge and AI workloads.
    • Physical security and compliance – Keeping data in-house allows you to control physical access, satisfy compliance mandates and ensure data never leaves the premises.

For enterprises pushing performance boundaries, SSDs deliver the responsiveness and reliability cloud alone can’t match. 

Drawbacks of on-premises SSD storage

Despite their strengths, on-premises SSD deployments come with their own set of challenges: 

• • • Capital expenditure – Deploying enterprise SSD infrastructure requires significant upfront investment. Budget cycles must account for initial outlay and eventual refresh.
    • Scaling limitations – Unlike cloud, scaling storage capacity requires purchasing and deploying new hardware, which is a slower, less flexible process.
    • Maintenance and operational overhead – On-prem hardware requires staff with expertise in monitoring, patching and upgrades.
    • Disaster recovery complexity – You’re responsible for your own backup and DR plans, which may involve secondary sites and additional infrastructure.
    • Technology obsolescence – SSD technology evolves quickly, and hardware can become outdated in a few years, forcing refresh cycles to keep up with performance and density improvements.

On-prem SSDs are powerful, but they demand resources and long-term planning. 

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Matching storage solutions to workload and business needs

As stated previously, most organizations use a mix of flexible cloud and high-performance on-prem data storage for the best results. Knowing which environment to use depends on the needs of your workloads and overall business goals.  

Need for performance  
Performance-sensitive applications, such as databases, high-transaction systems, AI/ML training and other applications that require low latency, are best stored in on-premises SSD storage. SSDs deliver the consistent high performance and low latency these apps need.

Data access patterns 
By categorizing your data into hot, warm and cold tiers, based on how frequently you access it, you can make storage choices more clear. Most organizations store their most frequently accessed, or hot, data in their fastest, highest-performance storage on-premises. Cold, less frequently accessed, data is often stored in the cloud in more cost-effective archival storage. Warm data can be stored in the cloud in higher storage tiers than archival or on-premises in storage that might not offer the highest performance.

Regulatory and compliance requirements
Organizations in highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, finance and government, face strict requirements for how and where data is stored. Regulations may mandate retaining data for years, sometimes decades, and dictate the level of security and auditability needed. While cloud platforms are often used for long-term retention, highly sensitive information is frequently kept on-premises to ensure full control and verifiable security. Data sovereignty further complicates the picture. Many regulations require that data remain within specific national or regional boundaries. These factors can heavily influence whether data lives in the cloud, on local SSD infrastructure or across a carefully managed hybrid environment.

Cost-benefit analysis 
It’s smart to look beyond sticker prices and calculate total cost of ownership and performance per dollar over several years. By understanding the needs of your workloads and budget limitations, you can find a good balance of high-performance and low-cost storage.

閱讀：用於持續寫入密集型工作負載的 SSD

Simplify hybrid storage with a unified platform

A hybrid storage strategy only works if you can see and control all your data, no matter where it lives. That’s why a unified management platform is essential. With the right tools, SSDs can serve as a high-speed cache for cloud storage, ensuring that applications run smoothly without duplicating entire datasets. Automated migration and synchronization keep information consistent as it moves between on-prem and cloud tiers. Policy-driven orchestration and analytics provide the visibility needed to monitor performance, enforce compliance and optimize costs across environments. In short, unified management turns a patchwork of storage systems into a seamless, balanced architecture that aligns with workload requirements without locking you into one model. 

Real-world use cases for hybrid storage

金融服務 
Trading desks require microsecond response times for transactions, making SSDs critical for front-end performance. Meanwhile, compliance archives are stored in the cloud for cost efficiency and redundancy.

Healthcare organizations 
Patient records and imaging data remain on-prem for compliance and immediate access. Research teams leverage cloud storage for large, collaborative datasets.

製造業
IoT devices generate streams of sensor data. SSDs at the edge process data locally in real time, while aggregated insights are moved to the cloud for long-term analytics.

Technology companies
Developers use cloud environments for rapid dev/test, but production workloads, especially those requiring guaranteed responsiveness, run on SSD infrastructure.

These examples highlight how organizations realistically mix and match storage based on workload priorities. 

Cost optimization strategies for enterprise storage 

Storage decisions are financial as well as technical, and optimizing costs requires a holistic view. It’s important to evaluate the full total cost of ownership (TCO). For on-prem SSDs, that means factoring in power, cooling, staffing, maintenance and refresh cycles. For cloud, the calculation includes subscription fees, egress charges and redundancy costs. 

Performance per dollar is another critical metric. A thorough understanding of your workloads can help you identify where SSD investments deliver higher ROI than the cloud, and vice versa. Careful capacity planning and forecasting also matter; anticipating future data growth prevents both costly overprovisioning and the risks of underbuying.  

Treat storage as a lifecycle process by planning hardware refresh cycles to align with renegotiation windows for cloud contracts. Because both cloud providers and hardware vendors offer significant discounts for volume and long-term commitments, you can save substantially by negotiating strategically. 

Taken all together, these practices form a disciplined financial approach that ensures your storage  will support your organization’s growth without consuming your budget. 

Future-proof storage by preparing for emerging technologies and trends

Enterprise storage in the cloud and on-premises continues to evolve. Forward-looking organizations are already preparing for technologies and trends that could become tomorrow’s standard. These include: 

• • • NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) – Extends SSD performance over networks, enabling disaggregated storage architectures.
    • Computational storage – Brings compute capabilities closer to data, reducing latency for analytics and AI.
    • Storage-class memory (SCM) – Blurs the line between memory and storage, delivering near-DRAM performance.
    • AI-driven management – Uses machine learning to automate tiering, predict failures and optimize cost/performance balance.
    • Edge computing – With more workloads moving closer to data sources, SSDs will play a critical role in delivering real-time performance at the edge.

Enterprises that monitor and adopt these innovations early gain a competitive edge. 

Steps to implementing a balanced storage infrastructure

You can avoid missteps by approaching storage transformation as a structured journey. Common steps to building out your infrastructure include:

• • • Assessment – Audit current workloads, classify data and map compliance requirements.
    • Planning – Define policies for tiering, performance and cost goals.
    • Migration – Move workloads in phases, beginning with non-critical systems.
    • Benchmarking – Validate that SSD and cloud tiers deliver the expected performance.
    • Monitoring and governance – Continuously optimize storage mix, enforce compliance and track spending.

A step-by-step roadmap ensures that your storage strategies evolve smoothly without disrupting business operations.

Read: Powering the World’s Most Demanding Workloads

Achieving the right storage balance for your enterprise needs

The storage debate about choosing cloud or on-premises SSDs for data storage really comes down to striking the right balance. Cloud offers unmatched scalability and global reach, while SSDs deliver the performance, control and compliance you need for your most demanding workloads. For most organizations, a hybrid approach is the pragmatic path forward. By analyzing workloads, aligning storage tiers to business needs and adopting emerging technologies, you can create a resilient, cost-optimized infrastructure that supports growth today and adapts to future demands. 

This is where Phison’s Pascari 企業 SSD play a critical role. Engineered for high performance, ultra-low latency and exceptional endurance, the Pascari lineup provides the reliability and responsiveness needed for mission-critical workloads like AI training, transactional databases and real-time analytics. Whether deployed as primary storage or as a high-speed cache layer in a hybrid environment, Pascari SSDs ensure that you don’t have to compromise between speed and scalability. 

As you navigate the evolving landscape of hybrid storage, having the right technology foundation is essential. Phison is committed to empowering organizations with advanced SSD solutions designed to keep pace with modern workloads and future growth.   

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