A storage system has a first storage and a second storage. The first storage has a first plurality of blades with first computing resources, first RAM resources and first solid-state storage resources. The second storage has second plurality of blades with second computing resources, second RAM resources and second solid-state storage resources. The first computing resources and the second computing resources cooperate to determine on which blades of the first and second pluralities of blades, and in which storage of the first and second storage, to perform compute processes and memory controller processes, using which of the first and second computing resources. The first computing resources and the second computing resources cooperate to determine on which blades of the first and second pluralities of blades and in which storage of the first and second storage to use which of the first and second RAM resources and to use which of the first and second solid-state storage resources, in service of performing the compute processes and the memory controller processes for data and metadata accesses.