Introduction and falling costs
Flash storage as a replacement for traditional hard drives has been touted as the next great hardware advance for the last few years.
When techradar pro spoke with Vaughn Stewart, VP, enterprise architect at Pure Storage, he said: "Flash is a massively disruptive technology. Enterprise storage vendors that are still reliant today on hard disks for performance storage are in a position eerily similar to that of Kodak a decade ago: confronted with a new technology that can dramatically undercut their current products and disrupt their business model."
Of course outside of the data centre where flash storage is likely to make its presence felt most acutely, does flash have the same potential to disrupt how businesses buy storage capacity for their enterprises?
All businesses have experience of this technology – the smartphones and tablets that have proliferated and many thin form factor notebook PCs make use of flash or SSD (Sold State Drive) storage.
Cost to capacity ratio
For small businesses owners the cost to storage capacity ratio has been an issue. Costs are falling, albeit slowly, but the advantages are clear:
Application performance is enhanced for users especially when connecting to a networkReliability is improved, as SSDs contain no moving partsDisk failure rates are much lower than with traditional hard disksData mining and analytics become more efficient, as SSDs can respond faster to queries
Tom O’Neill, chief technology officer for Kaminario in EMEA commented: "When it comes to SSD storage suitability, it really depends on the business. Flash presents an excellent business case for any organisation where speed of data access adds business value. Good examples of these include Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers and online businesses, or any other business model where users have to wait on information being read or written.
"For these businesses, flash can provide a real competitive advantage in the digital marketplace where customers can switch providers near instantly if they are not satisfied with service levels."
Smaller enterprises moving away from traditional storage technologies may begin with portable media. At CES this year Samsung showed what it claims to be the world’s smallest portable SSD. The T3 has configurations starting at 250GB running up to 2TB and weighs just 51 grams. The 1TB version costs around £300 which is no small investment when a comparable portable hard disk can cost as little as £30.
Flash decisions
Flash decisions
To gain an insight into how SSDs are transforming business, techradar pro spoke with Paul Harrison, director, Storage, Dell UK.
Techradar Pro: Is there now a sound business case for small businesses to use SSD storage in their companies?
Paul Harrison: "To date, cost has been the single greatest barrier to flash adoption for companies of all sizes across the world. However, the performance benefits of flash storage – primarily its ability to handle data at much faster rates in a smaller form factor with excellent reliability compared to traditional spinning disks – coupled with the decreasing cost of SSD memory per gigabyte has changed the game.
"It’s crucial that flash solutions within storage, compute and converged portfolio are open to all enterprises at all levels and sizes. Now the potential gains against competitors are beginning to outweigh the initial costs and with options to gradually adopt flash arrays in fully scalable hybrid SSD/HDD solutions, businesses are discovering few reasons to continue with standard spinning disk technology.
"As the newest kid on the block, Triple-Level Cell (TLC) with 3D NAND technology offers the highest density and lowest cost-for-performance when compared to any other enterprise flash drive. TLC offers flash technology at roughly the same price per gigabyte as high-end 15K HDDs with up to 24 times performance improvement, up to six times the density compared to MLC drives, and lower latency and lower power consumption. This makes it the perfect choice for organisations with limited budgets.
"It excels at data reads at the lowest cost, and pairs best with premium read intensive (MLC) SSDs designed for highest performing applications. This pairing creates a flash-optimised solution that provides all-flash, but automatically tiers between the flash drive technologies to reduce the overall storage cost while maintaining performance."
TRP: Outside of data centres, SSDs as mass storage devices have been expensive and lacked capacity. Is this now changing with SSDs offering real advantages to smaller businesses in particular?
PH: "Modern flash arrays – both hybrid and all-flash options – are designed to bring high-end enterprise storage capabilities to companies of all sizes at reasonable pricing, justifying the investment in future storage needs and capability.
"Some of the most recent entrants to the hybrid-flash market are beginning to come in below the cost of advanced HDD arrays, offering organisations better performance without the additional costs associated with per-disk software licensing, enclosure costs and extra spares required for HDD solutions.
"In addition, new flash models are emerging with significantly improved storage capacities – Dell offers 3.8TB drives as part of its newest drive range – making flash more practical at any scale. This also brings an additional advantage as more capacity per drive – which is already physically smaller than HDD counterparts – means that it is now possible to provide a complete 90TB array in only 2U of rack space."
TRP: Can you offer some buying advice to SMEs that are looking seriously at SSDs for the first time?
PH: "IT professionals should always seek maximum value across the board, utilising the cost reductions provided by hybrid flash, along with storage tiering and thin provisioning for better long term total cost of ownership (TCO). Hybrid flash is the perfect stepping stone to enter the SSD market and with some companies already electing to go all-flash, businesses really can’t afford to hang around in improving their storage infrastructure."
Buy now?
It’s clear that the market for SSDs is rapidly shifting. There is no doubt that businesses that use any cloud services will be winners, as they benefit from network speed improvements that are possible with hybrid HDD/SSD memory arrays.
Kaminario’s Tom O’Neill concluded: "We are at a point where SSDs always give much better performance than HDD and they are always more reliable than HDDs, so the only question is economics. Currently SSD media in a business class server has a cost premium of at least 200% compared to enterprise disk.
"However, as the density of flash increases exponentially, we’re also seeing a decline in price, which is making it far more accessible for SMBs. We are already seeing the acceleration of migration from disk, and as the price falls further, this rate will only increase."
Desktop and portable storage SSDs continue to be too expensive to simply replace your existing HDDs. This will of course change as the technologies aimed at data centres and enterprise trickle down for general business use. Until then only businesses that have a genuine need for high capacity fast and reliable storage will pay the premium attached to SSDs.
How the flash new kids on the block are muscling aside the old storage giants
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