So we previously established that we see 5 different storage architectures from a broad sense.

1) Storage Islands
2) Scale Up, Dual controller, add shelves for capacity, stuck on performance
3) Scale Up, Hub & Spoke
4) Scale Out, add storage AND capacity linearly as needed
5) Bring your own Platform (BYOP)

So who falls where and why?

Here again is my take, I am open to anyone commenting and I am willing to change this designation if valid cases are made. Also note some are listed under multiple categories, not everything fits in nice buckets so easily, but I did try.

1) Storage Islands – Netapp E-series, EMC DSSD, Data Gravity,

2) Scale Up, Dual controller, add shelves for capacity, stuck on performance – NetApp AFF, EMC VNX, Dell Compellent, Dell Equallogic, Pure FlashArray

3) Scale Up, Hub & Spoke – EMC XtremeIO, EMC VMAX, Nutanix, Atlantis USX Appliance

4) Scale Out, add storage AND capacity linearly as needed – NetApp SolidFire SF Arrays, EMC Isilon, Dell Equallogic

5) Bring your own Platform (BYOP) – NetApp SolidFire Element X, VMware VSAN, EMC ScaleIO, OpenStack Ceph, Atlantis USX SW, PernixData

So what do you think?

Edits: Moved Equallogic to Scale Out per a conversation on twitter 4/25/16