Compliance storage:

Storage management is the process of ensuring an organization's storage systems and its data are fully protected in accordance with the organization's security requirements (compliance). The primary purpose is to retain data for compliance purposes, i.e., have them available in case the need for future analysis/investigation arises. Compliance storage use cases assume very little search and therefore have low workload requirements.

Data Lake:

A data lake is a storage repository that can hold raw structured and unstructured data. They are flexible, so they are better for storing data from a variety of sources. Finally, they can break down data silos. The intent of a data lake use case is to have data from various sources available and make them accessible as needed. Access is assumed to be infrequent but more often than data stored for compliance reasons. Workload requirements are still relatively low but higher than for compliance storage.

Basic Reporting:

The process of collecting and formatting raw data and translating it into a digestible format to assess organizational performance.

Ad Hoc Investigation:

Ad hoc analysis is performed by business users on an as-needed basis to address data analysis needs not met by the business's static, regular reporting. End users engage in ad hoc investigation when specific insights need to be extracted.  

Continuous Monitoring:

Continuous monitoring provides real-time visibility into an organization's IT environment. It is defined by automation, and is a process that is constantly being refined. Continuous monitoring is characterized by scheduled and frequent searches of specific data sets.  This drives very high search activity, is the most workload intensive use case and requires the largest amount of resourcing per GB of data volume monitored.