What’s the difference? Elastic and Splunk data tiers

Elastic and Splunk offer distinct data management approaches characterized by their unique tier structures, which classify data based on access frequency, cost efficiency, and performance needs. Elastic employs a five-tier system consisting of Hot, Warm, Cold, Frozen, and Snapshots tiers, each designed to optimize data storage and retrieval performance while maintaining scalability and availability. In contrast, Splunk uses a four-tier system in its Enterprise solution with Hot+Warm, Cold, SmartStore, and Frozen tiers, where the Hot+Warm tier serves as the primary destination for newly ingested data, and SmartStore enables remote storage usage. In their cloud solutions, Elastic Cloud maintains the same tier structure as its on-premises offering, while Splunk Cloud adopts a three-tier structure focusing on cost savings through the use of SmartStore, DDAA, and DDSS tiers. The divergent approaches between Elastic and Splunk highlight the importance of understanding the mechanics of each tier to make informed decisions for strategic, cost-effective data management.