If there was any doubt that Intel sees a future for flash off of the motherboard, their deal with HGST has put them to rest. Hitachi will market SSDs based on Intel’s flash technology.
This is a vote for SSDs in the Enterprise, where the benefits of flash can be fully realized. It is also a tacit endorsement of the integration value storage device makers bring to SSD products.
Categories: Datacenter · SSD
Tagged: enterprise, Flash, HGST, Hitachi, Intel, SSD
Solid state drives shine in the company of disk drives
SSDs are crazy fast but very expensive. Compared to SSDs, disk drives seem slow – but are very affordable. Which should you use?
Digitar’s experience shows the magic of blending the two technologies in an enterprise system. System speed resembles the SSD, while system cost looks more like the disk drive. Processing cost dropped from $6 per IOPS for disk only to $1 per IOPS in their blended system.
A little flash thoughtfully placed goes a long way.
Categories: SSD · Storage Systems
Tagged: Digitar, Flash, SSD, storage, Sun, SunFire
SSDs will be an almost ideal addition to enterprise storage systems. Notebooks? Not so much.
1. Many drives vs. one drive. SSDs replace multiple disk drives in high-end enterprise systems. Notebooks use SSDs as a one-for-one replacement, which wastes most of the game-changing advantages of flash.
2. Servers need speed, notebooks need capacity. Servers can use SSD’s blazing performance without requiring much capacity. SSD performance matters little to a notebook, but hundreds of gigabytes are needed per drive. SSDs biggest weakness is cost per gigabyte.
3. SSD power consumption matters more to the enterprise. Notebooks care about power, but the drive’s share of a notebook’s power draw doesn’t make that much difference in battery life. High-end enterprise systems have a heat problem from multiple drives in a small space that SSD will help to alleviate.
4. Notebooks don’t leverage SSD speed. A notebook’s boot time and performance depend on many factors beyond access time. High-end systems use many drives striped in parallel to maximize performance – a perfect opportunity for a much faster device.
Even in Enterprise, the devil is in the details
So let’s go, right? Not so fast, cowboy! One way SSD is less suited for the data center than notebooks is in durability. Unlike notebooks, high-end systems work storage devices like dogs. SSDs are improving, but today’s products can wear out before their time. Losing data in a notebook doesn’t compare with losing it in a high-end business application. And standards are a bigger deal in the data center.
Ready-for-prime-time versions will be available starting in 2009. In the meantime, it’s smart to start playing with the technology now so you’re ready to implement in volume next year.
Buy a fancy SSD notebook, too, if you’re a Techie or want to act like one. If not, it’s probably a waste of your money.
Categories: Datacenter · Laptop PC · SSD
Tagged: battery life, disk drive, enterprise, Flash, laptop, notebook, performance, power, SSD, storage
SSD sounds great, but the reality doesn’t match the dream
Solid State Technology talked to Seagate and Fujitsu SSD leaders and came to the same conclusions posted here before - SSDs for notebooks may sound like a great match, but it’s just not happening.
Why? Price – big difference! Boot time and battery life – little to no difference.
Yes, there are small opportunities for ultra-high end early adopters and ultra-portable mini-PCs. But the total opportunity for SSDs over the next several years will be miniscule compared to disk drives.
Enterprise is a larger and more profitable niche for SSDs – but even there the opportunity is at the tip of the storage iceberg that will remain dominated by disk.
Any SSD users out there that disagree?
Categories: Digital Home · Laptop PC · Random · SSD
Tagged: Flash, Fujitsu, laptop, notebook, Rich Vignes, Seagate, SSD
