Storage Effect

SAS drives are thriving outside the data center, despite SATA’s cost advantage 

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) was created to replace SCSI, the long-standing enterprise hard drive interface.  It has done that, but there have been sightings far from the datacenter.  Places like Ravelry, a seemingly  home-hosted knitting website: 

Rather than shrink in the face of lower priced SATA drives, SAS drives are expanding into SATA’s domain.  What’s going on here? 

• SATA compatibility.  SATA drives interoperate with SAS, so many entry server backplanes and PC motherboards are switching to SAS to cover both interfaces.  This has created a virtual “Storage Foreign Exchange Program” as SATA drives are adopted in the enterprise, and SAS drives are tried in homes and small businesses.
• Cost.  New 1 TB 7200 RPM SAS drives like the Seagate Barracuda ES.2 cost about $50 more than their SATA equivalents. 
• Capacity.  The newest SAS enterprise-class drives like Seagate’s 450GB Cheetah 15K.6 offer more capacity than past enterprise drives.  This makes them more affordable on a cost-per-GB basis.
• Physical size.  The server market has adopted 2.5″ SAS drives en masse, and the storage system market will follow.  These drives use a lot less power and space than conventional enterprise drives without sacrificing performance.  There are no reasonable SATA 2.5″ alternatives today.

If you’re still stuck in a SCSI/SATA mindset, consider a crash course on SAS. 

Who’s replaced SATA or IDE with SAS recently?

500GB, 7200 rpm - who needs 3.5″?

Seagate announced two new 500GB notebook drives.  So what?

• The 50-year history of the disk drive is all about cramming more and more bytes on less and less real estate.  The real estate shrinks when drive formats drop a size.
• 500GB 2.5″ drives mean we’re close to not needing the capacity advantage of 3.5″ drives. It’s the beginning of the end for the 3.5″ form factor.  Servers have mostly made the switch with 2.5 SAS drives like Seagate’s Savvio.
• 500GB 2.5″ 7200 rpm drives mean notebooks can get desktop performance without sacrificing capacity.  Expect rapid adoption of 7200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm in notebooks now that there is capacity parity and less of a premium in power consumption.

The world’s biggest drives just got 50% bigger

Though not near as sound-bytable as 1 TB, Seagate’s announcement of the world’s first 1.5 TB drive is big news.  The newest Barracuda  7200.11 adds 500 gigabytes to each drive in one fell swoop. It’s the biggest capacity jump in the history of disk drives. 

Expect to see 1.5 TB and 3 TB solutions start popping up in all those high-capacity hot spots: high end destop PCs, backup drives and home entertainment systems. 

UPDATE: What others are saying:Engadget, ZD Net, Daily Tech, Blocks and Files and PC World.

Next: the exabyte drive

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Because Disk looks more and more like Tape

Chris Evans points out the challenges of disk drive capacity outgrowing performance.  Sound familiar?  Until recently, these complaints were perennially aimed at linear-access tape technology, with random-access disk in the role of savior.

As disk now faces the same “can’t get the data out fast enough” problem, the solution is clear: SSDs.  Flash is the new access king in storage.  Or will be, because early products are struggling with reliability, write performance, and other capabilities that disk drive device and interface technology have fine-tuned over the decades. You can’t expect a breakthrough technology to hit the ground running.

Yesterday I found this Microsoft presentation in the blogosphere on the topic from 2006: flash_is_good

I guess I wasn’t original with my “Disk is the New Tape” thing.  Makes the idea all the more interesting! 

Next question:  Is there room in the flash future for SSD, Disk and  Tape?

In the Petabyte Age, new applications are redefining “Big Storage”

Think you’re with it now that you say “terabytes” instead of “gigabytes”?  You’re behind the curve.  For some applications, a petabyte is not nearly enough.

Wired Magazine says we’re living in the Petabyte Age.  One example: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, taking a billion “photos” of protons a second with each of six detectors. 

The LHC, expected to run 24/7 for most of the year, will generate about 10 petabytes of data per second. That staggering flood of information would instantly overwhelm any conceivable storage technology, so hardware and software filters will reduce the take to roughly 100 events per second that seem most promising for analysis. Even so, the collider will record about 15 petabytes of data each year, the equivalent of 15,000 terabyte-size hard drives filled to the brim.

Just one of many extreme data examples in this great read.  Soon, petabytes for all! Remember, scientists used to get giddy over 5 megabytes.  Dell’s David Graves at Inside IT says ”More storage please!”

Better learn to spell exabyte.

SAS drives get bigger and smaller to take share from SATA for business applications

IDC data from InfoStor shows this year and next are the golden age of SATA drives in the enterprise. 

It’s not that the trend for high capacity storage abates in the future; it’s that SAS drives are expanding their capabilities to replace SATA in many applications. 

• Bigger SAS: 1 TB SAS drives, matching the largest available SATA capacity.
• Smaller SAS:  2.5″ SAS drives, rapidly replacing 3.5″ SCSI, FC and SAS drives. 

Why settle for an interface originally designed for PCs if you can get the same thing in SAS for a little bit more?

SATA drives won’t go away of course - they still provide the most capacity for the dollar.  If it’s good enough for an application, people will continue to use it. 

Have you made the jump to SAS?  Why or why not?

Content drives storage, but the reverse is partially true

There’s no doubt the developments I listed in Friday’s post are enabling storage growth.  But they are mostly just removing the speed bumps impeding the real driver. 

With apologies to Bill Clinton, “It’s the content, stupid.” 

Without a purpose, all that impressive technology would sit on the shelf.  Here are the real reasons storage demand will continue unabated:

1. Broader use of content.  Hundreds of millions of additional people are using digital content in their daily lives due to developing global economies and new all-digital infrastructures.
2. Richer content.  Each file, video, image and message continues to grow in size.  High definition video is single-handedly transforming storage in the home by quadrupling the storage space required by digital collectors.
3. Increasing value of content.  Content is now worth real money to businesses and consumers alike.  This changes everything, as digital content is now bought, sold, collected, protected, and produced as evidence in legal matters, just like other financial instruments.

It’s tempting to think that the storage industry is luring new customers with dazzling storage technology.  The truth is they’re scrambling to keep up with customer demands for a good place to keep all their stuff.

1. Dramatic drop in storage cost per GB.  1 TB storage units are hitting consumer price points.  16 TB storage systems are hitting SMB price points. Massive quantities of storage are now within the mass market’s reach.  And It’s only going to get cheaper.
2. Increases in storage efficiency.  Deduplication, auto-storage tiering, low-power disk drives and MAID are going mainstream, dramatically increasing the ratios of usable information per $, per square foot and per Watt. 
3. Virtualization. Server virtualization from VMWare, Microsoft and Citrix, VTL maturation, and the thin client movement are goosing storage use because storage is so easily added from a central pool.  SAN scale with DAS implementation ease.

Do you buy this reasoning? I don’t. These are real trends, and positive. But they are based on the premise of “build it and they will come”.

Tune in on Monday for the real reasons storage will continue to blow the doors off projections for the next 5 years.

Storage “arms dealing”, the recession and the content revolution

Robert’s conducted a great interview with Seagate CEO Bill Watkins.  He really got Bill to open up, share what was on his mind.  Well, I guess that’s not that unusual…but it’s a great interview nonetheless!

Check it out 

Survey shows virtualized servers are to storage what salted peanuts are to an ice cold drink

Dave Simpson at InfoStor reported on Enterprise Strategy Group’s recent survey on server virtualization.  They explored how this new technology is affecting storage plans and practices.  Results:

• Over half of respondents saw storage volume increase due to server virtualization
• Only 7% saw storage volume decreasing
• Network storage performance was a bigger server virtualization concern than storage cost
• Half of respondents use multiple storage technologies for their virtual server environment (#1: FC SAN)

Server virtualization is a leading indicator for storage

A clear lesson here is that server virtualization adopters are fertile ground for storage solutions.  

How aware are you of your customer’s virtual plans? 

How familiar are you with server virtualization-friendly storage solutions like Compellent?