You also need to understand that SDS does not create space out of nothing, nor does it separate the concept of storage from hardware—such as hard drives, solid state drives (SSD), or any hardware device that is designed to store information. These hardware devices will always be where the actual data is stored. SDS adds a logical layer that allows you to control where and how you store this data. It leverages this with its most fundamental components, that is, with an application programming interface (API) that allows you to manage and maintain your storage cluster and logical volumes, which provide the storage capacity to your other servers, applications, and even monitoring agents that self-heal the cluster in the event of degradation.