A method for managing processing power in a storage system, comprising: providing a plurality of blades, each of a first subset having a storage node and storage memory, and each of a second, differing subset having a compute-only node with a RAM as system memory and no storage memory; distributing authorities across the plurality of blades, to a plurality of nodes including at least one compute-only node, wherein each authority has ownership of a range of user data such that the authorities control how and where data is stored in the non-volatile solid state storages of the storage memory, wherein the plurality of authorities are distributed as a predetermined policy to the plurality of blades in proportion to an amount of memory available on each of the blades such that a blade with a greater amount of RAM receives more authorities than a blade with a lesser amount of RAM and the RAM across the authorities is balanced such that each authority has a comparable amount of RAM accessible to the authority on the blade on which the authority resides; distributing the processing power of each blade across the blades to a front-facing tier, an authorities tier, and a storage tier according to predetermined agreements or policies; and performing external I/O processing in the front-facing tier with the front facing tier decoding I/O requests and figuring to which authority should each request be sent and performing internal I/O processing in the authorities tier and the storage tier, the authorities tier being adapted for servicing the authorities, and the storage tier being adapted for servicing the storage memory; and redistributing processing power in the authority tiers according to the predetermined policy by moving authorities from blades to blades . providing a plurality of blades, each of a first subset having a storage node and storage memory, and each of a second, differing subset having a compute-only node with a RAM as system memory and no storage memory; distributing authorities across the plurality of blades, to a plurality of nodes including at least one compute-only node, wherein each authority has ownership of a range of user data such that the authorities control how and where data is stored in the non-volatile solid state storages of the storage memory, wherein the plurality of authorities are distributed as a predetermined policy to the plurality of blades in proportion to an amount of memory available on each of the blades such that a blade with a greater amount of RAM receives more authorities than a blade with a lesser amount of RAM and the RAM across the authorities is balanced such that each authority has a comparable amount of RAM accessible to the authority on the blade on which the authority resides; distributing the processing power of each blade across the blades to a front-facing tier, an authorities tier, and a storage tier according to predetermined agreements or policies; and performing external I/O processing in the front-facing tier with the front facing tier decoding I/O requests and figuring to which authority should each request be sent and performing internal I/O processing in the authorities tier and the storage tier, the authorities tier being adapted for servicing the authorities, and the storage tier being adapted for servicing the storage memory; and redistributing processing power in the authority tiers according to the predetermined policy by moving authorities from blades to blades . <EOS>