Solid State Drives Future of Data Storage

8/2/2019 Solid State Drives Future of Data Storage

1/14an Storage eBook

Solid State Drives:

The Future oData Storage?


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2 SSDs, Coming Soon to a Server Near You

4 Could Solid State Spell the End or Hard Drives?

6 SSDs, The Pros and Cons

9 SSD Makers Wrestle with Perormance Degradation

12 SSDs Take Center Stage

Contents

This content was adapted from Internet.coms ServerWatch, CIO Update, Enterprise IT Planetand Enterprise Storage Forum Web sites. Contributors: Kenneth Hess, Paul Rubens, Pam Baker

Herman Mehling, and Drew Robb.

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Solid State Drives: The Future o Data Storage?


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2 Solid State Drives: The Future of Data Storage?, an Internet.com Storage eBook. 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, IncBack to Contents


S

olid state drives (SSDs), as compared to their

spinning counterparts, have no moving parts,

require less power, have a smaller ootprint, pro-

duce a raction o the heat, enjoy a longer liespan and perorm better in some systems. That rst sen-

tence should have sold you what else do you need to

know? Oh, right, the downside. Youre right; its the price

tag. They currently range in price rom two or three times

or smaller drives (about 30GB) to more than 10 times that

or drives in the 120GB to 250GB range. Dont let the pric-

es scare you away rom SSDs. As the technology matures,

the prices will drop signicantly.

When deciding on your next move in storage technology,

keep in mind you dont need a huge amount o disk space

to install an operating system. Hypervisors use about 4GB

and ull installations o Windows Server 2008 require that

same 4GB. A $90 32GB SSD provides more than enough

space or the operating system and any uture patchesservice packs, and related operating system support les.

Green TechnologyAt rst glance at the prices, you might think that the

green in this technology is the price, but it isnt. Its the

technology behind the high price. Lowering the amount

o heat produced by hundreds o disk drives adds up ast

Data centers will run at near-normal oce temperatures in

stead o the current rosty temperatures around which they

now hover. Requiring less power rom your utility company

proves that this new technology saves money and not justin theory (see the table below).

SATA vs. SSD (Watts)

Drive Type Idle Seek Start-Up

SATA 8 10 20

SSD 0.08 0.15 ND*

*No Data or startup power consumption or SSDs.

The table shows the average power consumption rom a

variety o dierent SATA and SCSI drives. The SSDs areIntel High Perormance SSDs.

PerformanceI youve heard o SSDs, youve also heard about their in-

creased perormance over conventional disk technology

Since SSDs dont have moving parts, their seek times re-

turn numbers in the range o 75 microseconds to 1 mil-

lisecond. Standard disk technology runs in the 4 to 5 mil

lisecond range.

SSDs, Coming Soon to aServer Near You

By Kenneth Hess


4/14



Having said that SSDs outperorm their conventional coun-

terparts in seek times, dont install write-intensive applica-

tions on them. Leave the operating system and perhaps

a read-intensive application on a local disk but or heavy

writes, use the same technologies that you do now: stor-

age area network (SAN) or high-perormance network at-

tached storage (NAS).

Life ExpectancyWith lower power consumption, less heat to dissipate, and

no moving parts, come a longer lie expectancy or disk

drives and other system components. Estimates or SSD

data integrity exceed 10 years. Some manuacturers say

the data on them could last as long as 100 years. Im im-pressed enough with 10 to 15 years. SSDs will lengthen the

lie expectancy o your entire server inrastructure. Think

about it. What causes you to upgrade your hardware other

than expired lease terms? Failures. The reasonable lie ex-

pectancy o standard technology is three years. Youre re-

ally pushing it beyond that. What is the most ailure prone

component in your systems? Disk drives. Power supplies

run a close second. I power consumption and heat rom

disks decreases, how much longer will those power sup-

plies last? You guessed it, longer.

How would your IT budget handle technology rereshes

that exceed ve years? Seven years? Longer?

The case or SSD adoption is strong indeed. SSDs tran-

scend the hype thats oten associated with new technolo-

gies. Independent case studies show that SSDs create a

new storage playing eld and manuacturers suggest

that conventional spinning disk technology is near its na

breath. I predict within ve years, SSDs will populate more

than 90 percent o all server systems and NAS. By that

time, technology will have caught up to the point where

any application will eel right at home on SSDs even the

write-intensive ones.


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M

echanical hard drives with spinning disks are

doomed to extinction, thanks to solid state

fash drives that are becoming cheaper and

oering greater capacity by the month. Atleast thats how some in the data storage industry see it.

Outwardly, theres a convincing logic

to this argument, especially when you

consider whats happened in other

markets where devices with moving

parts aced competition rom solid

state electronics. Televisions, tele-

phony and radio equipment, clocks,

automobile ignition... the list is end-

less, and in every case its ended upwith the same result: solid state elec-

tronic devices have won because they

are cheaper to make, more reliable,

and oer similar or (usually) superior

perormance.

So when it comes to storage plan-

ning, its sensible to at least consider

when fash-based SSDs might take

over rom conventional hard disk

drives (HDDs). Right now, SSDs aresignicantly more expensive per gigabyte than HDDs, and

while they oer very ast read speeds, they suer rom

slower write speeds, and rom the limited number o times

fash cells can be written to beore they wear out.

But fash memory prices are alling rapidly, perhaps by 50

percent to 60 percent a year, and SSD technology is also

improving, so write speeds are likely to increase and mem-

ory wear-out is likely to become less o a problem. For

example, companies such as Caliornia-based SandForce

promise technology innovations that will ensure fash cells

eectively last 80 times longer than is common now, withwrite speeds ar closer to levels achievable or reads.

As prices drop and the capacity and

perormance o SSDs improves, its

likely that rst a ew, and then an in

creasing number o HDDs o dierent

types will be replaced by their solid

state siblings. But the complete ex

tinction o HDDs is unlikely or many

years, i ever, or reasons well get to

in a moment.

Fibre ChannelCould Go FirstSo what type o HDDs are likely to be

replaced rst? David Vellante, a or-

mer IDC analyst and ounder o the

Wikibon project, believes that the

rst to go will be high-perormance

Fibre Channel (FC) drives, which are

usually bought or their high peror

mance and low access times. He argues that since fash

memory prices are alling much aster than HDD prices,

the price dierential between SSDs and FC HDDs which

is currently 15 times greater or SSDs will drop to a mul

tiple o just three in less than three years, and possibly

considerably less than that. At that price, SSDs with thei

aster read speeds will make the competing FC HDDs ob

solete, he believes.

Could Solid StateSpell the End for Hard Drives?

By Paul Rubens


6/14



o months, and those that dont are typically replaced ev-

ery two or three years anyway.

SSDs Obstacles: Tiering, InertiaThere are other problems to consider i you are adopting a

hard drives or capacity, SSDs or I/O strategy. How, o

example, do you make sure the right data is on the right

medium? To get the ull perormance benets o SSDs

and the cheap storage benets o spinning disks, you may

end up needing a whole new sotware layer to help move

data around in a tiering approach, Peters warns. But there

are companies like Compellent and Sun working on the

problem.

Another thing that may slow the advance o SSDs is the

act that there is an enormous installed base o FC drives

around the world. The stickiness o any given technology

shouldnt be underestimated when there is lots o it about

Look at tape storage it is still a multi-billion dollar busi-

ness, and holding its own too. IT departments are rightly

cautious when it comes to making changes and abandon

ing investments, so SSDs may be adopted ar slower than

the economic case dictates.

One thing is pretty much certain, however: delays wont becaused by vendors dragging their eet.

All the major vendors are looking at SSD technology

its not just a couple o them that are interested in pushing

it, said Peters.

Indeed, business rom the likes o EMC, Sun, IBM, and HP

have made STEC the early winner in the SSD sweepstakes

Going orward, STEC will ace greater competition rom

newer entrants like SandForce, Intel, where the technology

has attracted the attention o co-ounder Gordon Mooreand Fusion-IO the startup that managed to lure Apple

co-ounder Steve Wozniak out o retirement.

With all that excitement, perhaps analysts claims are not

that ar-etched. While conventional hard disk drives may

not be obsolete in the oreseeable uture, it appears cer-

tain that many o them will have been replaced by SSDs by

the time 2012 rolls around.

Mark Peters, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group,

agrees with at least some o this assessment. Id say that

Fibre Channel drives are rst in the ring line, said Peters.

In general, SSDs will be more attractive than FC drives i

they are not too much more expensive.

But Peters believes that SSDs will have an impact in the

FC drive market much sooner than Vellante anticipates. I

think SSD sales will take o next year, he said.

Thats because some IT departments will be willing to pay

a signicant premium over FC disk prices or SSDs that o-

er higher perormance. This should not be too much o a

surprise users have always paid more or disk storage

than tape, and FC drives rather than lower-perormance

drives. For applications that require the highest possible

I/O perormance, why shouldnt they pay more or SSDs?

But Peters warns against looking at storage media such as

FC drives and SSDs solely on a price per gigabyte basis. I

you have a 500GB FC disk and you are only using 200GB,

then what is the price per gigabyte? Your eective price

per gigabyte is more than twice as high, he said.

In any case, price per gigabyte is oten not the relevantmetric to be looking at when considering switching to

SSDs.

Companies should also be looking at price per I/O, or

price per millisecond o access time, or cost per unit o

power a drive consumes, depending on their circum-

stances, Peters said. And that means that you end up with

something like hard drives or capacity, and SSDs or I/O.

O course, it wont all be plain sailing or SSDs. There are

two sides to I/O: reading and writing. While SSDs have aclear advantage when it comes to read speeds, what about

the write side o things? And lets not orget about the lim-

ited lie o SSD memory cells.

I think these problems are overblown, said Peters. Well

overcome poor write speeds with techniques like caching

using DRAM, and will be able to get around wear problems

with techniques like wear leveling and over provisioning.

In any case, conventional hard drives oten ail in a matter


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Solid state disks made a splash in consumer tech-

nology, now the technology looks set to domi-

nate the enterprise storage market. Get ready

or a disruption in the storage ecosystem, said

Burton Group Analyst Gene Ruth. Given the overwhelming

challenges IT organizations ace today, is that predicted

disruption coming soon, or will it merely end up on hold?

HP agrees with industry insid-

ers that SSD will be more widely

used in storage systems as early

as next year and as a result, is

working closely with its partners

now to deliver innovative solid

state storage technology solu-

tions, said Jieming Zhu, dis-

tinguished technologist at HP

StorageWorks.

To SSD or Not to SSDThe storage industry has been

trapped within the connes o a

hard disk drive so long that its

dicult or it to think out o that

box, said Ruth. SSD technolo-

gies are game-changing and drive a whole new thought

pattern around persistent storage.

Ultimately, SSDs challenge the inrastructure all aroundthem. Traditional RAID may not apply, buses are too slow,

driver stacks have too much latency, le systems dont

properly leverage them, orm actors dont apply, peror-

mance is not linear, and on and on its a brave new world.

Well have to see how vendors choose to live in it, said

Ruth.

Storage vendors are all struggling with how to implement

around SSDs whether to take baby steps or big leaps

Whatever they decide, we should see some interesting

new products this year. One key question remains cente

o the discussion: will vendors charge a premium or SSD

perormance and enhanced unctionality or will they pass

on savings and establish a new perormance vs. cost ex-pectation? I hope they price in

the savings, said Ruth. Unit pric-

ing will not be the only consider-

ation, however.

Solid-state drives oer 50 to

100x perormance improvement

in certain applications and speci

cations over traditional hard disk

drives, said Troy Winslow, direc

tor o marketing at Intel NANDSolutions Group. This peror-

mance improvement, particularly

read and write input operations

per second (IOPS), combined

with lower power consumption

in both idle and active states

means solid-state drives delive

greater perormance and consume less power than tradi-

tional storage.

Thus total cost impact is likely to take precedence overunit costs. The decision to purchase SSD is almost al-

ways driven by a compelling return on investment (ROI),

said Ron Lloyd, product marketing manager at EMC Corp

The combination o SSD technology, SATA technology

and advanced quality o service sotware eatures has

changed how customers evaluate and plan their storage

investments.

SSDs, The Pros and ConsBy Pam Baker


8/14



ProsEnergy efcient. Using SSD technology reduces the

overall power consumption o devices such as disk arrays,servers, and laptops, but also improves their perormance

and environmental ruggedness, said HPs Zhu.

Low latency. SSDs implemented or use as physical disk

space allow users to automatically migrate active blocks

o data between drive types, increasing perormance by

keeping requently accessed blocks o data on Tier 0

SSD storage, and dynamically moves inactive data to less

expensive, lower tiers o storage. By combining automat-

ed tiered storage eature sets with SSDs, end-users have

the ability to purchase only the number o drives requiredto house active blocks o data, where other vendors re-

quire the costly purchase or entire volumes, said Bob

Fine, director o Product Marketing at Compellent.

It creates a Tier 0 storage environment and we will see a

Tier 0 to Tier 2 storage inrastructure in the near uture,

predicts Russ Johnson, senior vice president and general

manager o AMCCs Storage Business Unit. AMCC is work-

ing with SSD companies to ensure its RAID controllers take

advantage o SSD, allowing a mix o drive types without

perormance impacts. We believe that 2009 will be theyear that SSD nds it home.

Durability. SSD is designed to operate in more extreme

environments o up to 70 degrees Celsius. With no mov-

ing parts, SSD drives are less ragile and silent than hard

disks, which are more susceptible to operational and non-

operational shock and vibration, explains Zhu.

Control o unstructured fles. The incredible rise o un-

structured data is having a dramatic impact on storage and

data management applications. Were seeing growingdemand or specialized storage systems, including storage

media that give users the control or fexibility they need

to manage unstructured les over their lietime, said Jon

Aeld, senior director o Product Marketing and Business

Development at BlueArc, a provider o high-perormance

unied network storage systems. In the near term it wil

serve as a powerul caching tier or ast access to les tha

are in high demand. Moving orward, we can expect the

use o SSDs to get more sophisticated as we see data man-

agement applications incorporating more powerul search

classication, archiving and retrieval unctions.

Compatibility with operating systems. All SSD vendors

provide existing input/output storage protocol compatibil-

ity, interoperable with the existing operating system stor-

age stack, said Zhu.

Commoditized components. This is a classic Adam

Smithian market evolution, said CTO and inventor o Fu-

sion-ios solution, David Flynn. What used to be a single

vertically integrated provider becomes a layered market

where some people build the components, others inte-

grate them (with some bit o value added), and the market

moves to include many players competing on many levels

resulting in price reductions. Im not saying this market

transormation is going to happen by tomorrow, said Fly-

nn. But, given the geometric growth o the perormance

gap between processors and storage, and the geometric

decline in cost o NAND fash leading to a Moores LawSquared eect in the benet to cost ratio it is going to

happen aster than people would think.

ConsQuestionable lie expectancy o SSD. NAND Flash, the

underlying technology o todays majority SSD products

has write wear-out limitations, with embedded processors

sotware, and over provisioning o capacity, among other

things, said Zhu. SSD manuactures have addressed this

limitation, however, this inevitably adds another link in the

chain o the overall reliability o SSD-based systems thatmust be rigorously tested and certied. The lack o stan-

dard measurement o the lie expectancy o SSD is a majo

drawback, Zhu warns.


9/14



SSD technology is nascent. HP and other industry leaders

including Intel and Sun do not predict that SSD will replace

hard drives in the enterprise. Like any new technology,

SSD is still at the testing stages so there are a number o

actors and challenges that need to be addressed beore

it matures in the enterprise space, said Zhu.

Not ideal or all. SSD is not recommended or everyone,

it is ideally suited or businesses that require high-peror-

mance, intensive I/O operations; are power sensitive; and/

or are in a rugged environment, said Zhu. HP expects SSD

to be used as a premium perormance tier in well-balanced

storage deployments.

More Expensive. SSDs are a bit more expensive, have

less capacity, and a nite number o write cycles when

compared to traditional spinning drives, but those draw-

backs are quickly disappearing, explains Charles Kaplan

chie technology strategist at Mazu Networks, now part

o Riverbed, a wide area network optimization solutions

provider.

All things considered, CIOs are let guessing as to when

precisely to make the jump. In the enterprise, the benets

over traditional disk drives speed, reliability, eciency

lower power consumption make SSDs a major disrupte

in the storage space, said Michael Cornwell, lead tech-

nologist or Flash Memory at Sun Microsystems. Howeve

key players are only just beginning to recognize the marke

opportunity this technology has to oer.


10/14



S

olid state drives are known or perormance that

is many times that o hard disk drives (HDDs),

but whats not so well known is that SSD peror-

mance tends to degrade over time, and bench-marks show that SSDs can per-

orm much better new than when

heavily used.

The issue is an important one

when making enterprise storage

buying decisions, and its created

an opportunity or vendors that

can develop SSDs that perorm

more consistently over time.

Among the vendors that claimto have solved the problem are

Fusion-io, Pliant Technology, and

STEC.

SSDs suer rom a diculty that

doesnt exist in HDDs the fash

must be erased beore new data

can be written into it, said Jim Handy, an analyst at Objec-

tive Analysis, a market research rm specializing in SSDs

and semiconductors.

This erase, which can take up to a hal second, would

bring the SSD to its knees were it not or some clever work-

arounds that SSD makers build into their controllers, said

Handy. One o these is to over-provision, to build more

fash into the SSD than appears to the outside world.

SSD technologies typically suer signicant perormance

degradation over time by as much as 50 percent or

more as more data is written to the NAND fash memory

and as applications accessing the device vary the read-to-write ratio, said Greg Goelz, vice

president o marketing at Pliant

Technology.

This perormance droop

causes big issues or mission

critical, I/O-intensive data cente

and high-perormance comput

ing environments, which require

consistent, predictable peror

mance over time and across awide range o workloads, said

Goelz.

Problems with NANDFlashA NAND fash cell is a small elec

trical storage device with a nite

number o uses due to the eects o programming (remov

ing the charge) and erasing the cell. During a program/

erase event, the NAND fash cell can degrade to a point

where too much energy is trapped in the cell.

This means the cell cannot be drained and is stuck in a ul

state, said Lance Smith, senior vice president o product

marketing or Fusion-io. In other words, bits will remain a

0 or NAND fash.

SSD Makers Wrestle withPerformance Degradation

By Herman Mehling


11/14



Unlike traditional hard disk drives, SSDs must avoid writ-

ing repeatedly in the same location. Otherwise, a cell will

wear out. SSD designers can avoid this problem by writing

across the entire capacity o the drive beore writing to the

same location twice. This is called wear leveling.

A good design will attempt to perorm the erasure well

ahead o time to ensure the write event is not held up due

to the lengthy amount o time it takes to perorm the era-

sure, said Smith. Otherwise, write perormance will be lim-

ited by the rate o erasures, which is much slower.

To handle these issues, SSD makers, including Fusion-io,

have implemented a wear-leveling algorithm that creates

an abstraction layer.

Here, you have a logical block and a physical block, said

Smith.

The logical block points data to a dierent physical cell

with every write, ensuring that inormation is not erased

and that cells experience consistent wear over time. A

background maintenance application called a groomer

reclaims erased blocks o data and moves data round

the NAND fash chip as needed, maximizing the use o thespace and ensuring that no data is erased.

The grooming process itsel, however, can lead to reduc-

tions in data speed as data is coalesced to accommodate

newer data and ensure data integrity on the NAND fash

chips.

Over-Provisioning Offers a SolutionSmith said Fusion-io has addressed the issue by allowing

customers to over-provision, giving them extra grooming

space or data depending on their write needs.

Fusion-ios 80GB ioDrives are actory congured with 20

percent over-provisioning to accommodate typical usage

in the enterprise environment.

However, or write-heavy applications, users can increase

the amount o over-provisioning to 40, 50, or 60 percent

to suit their needs. In this way, users can use exactly the

amount o space they need or the write cycle to perorm

with maximum prociency.

Consistent SSD PerformanceBoth Pliant and STEC have created SSDs with proprietary

controllers and rmware designed to deliver consistent

perormance over time.

Pliants new Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs) have a numbe

o unique eatures and techniques to eliminate peror-

mance droop, said Goelz.

Our EFD delivers two to our times greater sustained I/O

perormance than todays astest SSDs, providing con-

sistent, predictable system perormance across a wide

range o workloads over an extended period o time, said

Goelz.

The EFDs maintain this perormance level whether reading

or writing data, and even as enterprise applications vary

the read-to-write ratio.

Goelz said Pliants EFD is the only solution able to per-

orm common tasks such as on-going memory reclaim and

other data integrity management unctions transparently

in the background, without aecting I/O perormance.

It also transparently manages a host o more advanced

tasks, including background Patrol Read, triple redundant

ECC (Error Correction Code) protected metadata, and

extended ECC to ensure data integrity without aecting

perormance.

Pliants SAS interace enables EFDs to perorm concurrent

reading and writing operations at our times the link band-

width o the single-port, hal-duplex SATA interace, which

is commonly used by competitive SSD products, accord-

ing to Goelz.


12/14



STECs drives also have built-in controllers and in-house

rmware ocused on allowing the drives to accept host

commands, move data within the drive, perorm ECC and

other background activities under all workloads with no

aect on throughput or perormance to the host system

This is accomplished by signicant design eort ocused

around the transactions within the host-drive interaces.

The raw media unctions within the drives are intention

ally separated and buered rom the host signaling in case

any slowing or issues presented on the media interaces

are not pushed through the controllers to the host. This

prevents any slowing in drive perormance.

STECs ApproachSTECs drives appear in almost all major storage OEM

sockets or many reasons, with perormance being one othe most important ones, said Scott Shadley, STECs se-

nior manager or SSD technical marketing.

Our drives are designed to eliminate the perormance

problems that exist within many SSD products, said

Shadley.

How do we do this? Our drives are developed in such a

way that they do not expect any type o idle time rom the

host system. This is vital, as a drive that expects ree time

will have very dierent perormance parameters.

Shadley said STEC drives operate under specic IP and

technology that allow or all activities within the drive to

work simultaneously without aecting the host.


13/14



Solid state drives also known as fash are

everywhere. In act, they may even have done a

great service to mankind by diverting messaging

away rom green IT. The big server and storage

OEMs seem to have gotten over their xation with green

IT, courtesy o their enthusiasm or SSD.

The price o SSDs continues to

all although it is still an order

o magnitude or two above that

o the hard drive. But vendors

seem to get it now, and they ap-

pear to understand how to pres-

ent the concept so it sells itsel.

Lou Przystas, a senior advisory

consultant at the corporate ex-

ecutive brieng center o EMCserved up a good example o

how vendors will entice everyone

to jump aboard the SSD band-

wagon very shortly.

He laid out an example within an

array to highlight how SSD will

initially replace Fibre Channel (FC) disks at least to some

degree. And helped somewhat by SATA, too.

The original 55 TB conguration o the array consisted o244 FC disks, each o 300 GB (FC) disks and running at

15k rpm. By reducing the number o FC disks to 136, add-

ing 32 x 1 TB SATA disks along with 8 SSDs (each o 73

GB), you arrive at the same 55 TB capacity. On top o that,

however, you get a whole lot more lot more perormance,

lower power consumption, and reduced cost.

This is accomplished by implementing tiers o storage

SSD isnt cost eective enough or big enough in terms o

capacity to dump everything on it. And its unlikely that

this will happen, at least in the near term. What should be

done, then, is to put perormance-critical data on fash,

as well as key applications, as easible. Przystas even sug-

gests loading key parts o a large application on fash andhaving the rest o the application

run on lower storage tiers.

With smart use o SSD and SATA

as per the above scenario, the end

result is 28 percent ewer drives

60 percent more drive IOPS, 21

percent savings in terms o pow-

er and cooling, and 17 percent

lower drive costs. The numbers

in terms o IOPs are roughly 80IOPS or SATA, 160/200 IOPS o

FC, and 5000 IOPS or fash.

A big reason or these gains is the

parallel read capability o fash

That delivers an access time o

1 ms or less. The astest FC disks

on the other hand, have response rates anywhere rom 10

to 60 ms. Further, there is little perormance deterioration

on fash during heavy usage unlike FC, which chokes

o badly above a particular point. The worst fash is likelyto get under the heaviest loads is an access rate alling to

about 3 ms. Thus, fashs appeal or top-tier storage and

applications.

As or ears that fash isnt as durable as disk, Przystas

pointed out that EMC oers the same ve- to seven-year

warranty or fash as SATA drives. And he expects that to

go up over time.

SSDs Take Center StageBy Drew Robb


14/14


Although SSD costs are high, they have come down a lot

during the past year. One SSD equals the IOPS o 30 15k

FC disks. By setting up SSD or the astest applications

and the most heavily used data, FC or the second tier, and

SATA or volume storage o less accessed data, big gains

can be realized.

A real world example concerns an Oracle-based transac-

tion telecom billing system. By swapping 4 percent o the

FC drives to SSD, the response time was brought down

by 60 percent. In this case, swapping 16 out o 384 FC

drives to fash resulted in massive gain. The original FC

disks with striping or perormance could manage 12 ms at

best. Flash brought that down to 1 ms or less.

Transaction-intensive applications with heavy IOPS on

reads are great or fash, said Przystas.

How about price? While most try to compare fash with

hard drives, this is missing the point. The real comparison

or now concerns fash with RAM, with the ormer being

about 50 times less expensive. The latest SSDs even har-

ness RAM to speed up writes, which was an early criticism

o the technology. EMC predicts that fash will be priced

very close to the cost o FC in about three years. When

that happens, watch out disk!

Flash is revolutionizing the industry, said Przystas. There

will come a time when we are saying, Remember when we

had spinning disks?

Documents

Solid State Drives Future of Data Storage