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SUPPLEMENT SSD


solution for portable electronic devices and enterprise storage strategies due to their unique specifi cations. SSDs deliver fast access times meaning data can be downloaded rapidly and devices can be booted up quickly. Due to their lack of mechanical parts, they are able to withstand shock and vibration, an essential feature for any storage solution.


With these features, the SSD has more than proved itself as a storage solution fi t to meet the business-critical, power-conscious and data-intensive storage needs in the modern enterprise. And, enterprise Solid State Drives (eSSD) have been developed for use in mid-range volume servers, mainstream storage array, blade and rackmount servers. Most eSSDs are built with NAND fl ash memory due to its lower cost and ability to retain data without a constant power supply. Essentially, eSSD’s use solid state memory to store data, emulating hard disk drives but without the moving parts. This lack of moving parts provides an especially robust storage solution with a fast access time. This also eliminates the risk of a mechanical failure, which makes them a reliable storage solution when it comes to storing valuable business critical data.


It’s their high performance that has made them stand out in the enterprise storage market crowd. Along with intense data demand, a key driver for the uptake of solid state storage in the enterprise has been virtualization. As more businesses try and access data from the cloud from both the offi ce and remote virtual desktops, they are putting a heavy strain on their servers and leading to I/O bottlenecks. This is where the eSSDs fast access times really come into play, delivering a fast IOPS performance to combat these I/O constraints.


The largest eSSD currently available from Toshiba is 400GB. While the capacity point is set to rise, it’s still the drive’s most limiting factor, especially when compared to its counterpart, the hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD is able to deliver much larger storage capacities at a much lower cost. By developing innovative technologies such as bit-patterned media, the areal density of the HDD can be expanded, giving better data per unit volume than SSDs. Furthermore, there is both a cost and a performance factor; HDDs may be more suited to cope with large volumes of data that don’t require fast access speeds, where as an eSSD would be more suitable for storage solutions where performance and fast access speeds are essential.


The cost of the eSSD has also been driven by its energy consumption. As a top class storage solution, it is often associated with expensive running costs. But a high performance drive stores high performance data. In an enterprise environment, it’s an ideal storage solution for mission critical data that needs to be accessed frequently and quickly, by a large number of users simultaneously. This calls for a fast IOPS performance and when one takes into account the cost per IOPS, it is at least a factor of ten cheaper than a 15K RPM drive. In this instance, performance needs to be weighed against energy consumption.


Although the eSSD is certainly a robust drive, the HDDs offer a greater resilience to abrupt power loss, as all the device components are housed within a sealed cage. HDD manufacturers have also been developing ruggedized HDDs; producing drives that are able to withstand the most extreme environments. Ruggedized hard drives have been implemented in the mining and forestry equipment as well as emergency vehicles.


SSD12 www.snseurope.info I October/November 2011


Ultimately, it’s about choosing the storage solution that’s most appropriate for a business’ needs. There are several key factors; cost, performance, reliability and effi ciency . One solution to address this variety of challenges would be to adopt a tiered storage model.


Tiered storage is the automated management of data to the most effective form of storage depending on cost, performance, availability, protection and recovery requirements. The speed that data is read from the storage device needs to be balanced with the investment cost. A tiered storage architecture will utilise the key benefi ts of the eSSDs and HDDs to provide the appropriate storage solution according to how frequently the data needs to be accessed.


Access speeds are graduated, starting with the highest at the top of the pyramid and decreasing to the lowest at the bottom. The lowest tier would house offl ine data that is required for back up or compliance. This would be stored in 7,200 RPM hard disk drives. The ascending tiers would store business critical and online data with the faster 10,000 RPM towards the top of the pyramid. On the top sits the eSSD with its super-fast access speeds, used to store mission critical data that needs to be downloaded frequently.


The tiered storage solution has been engineered to develop the most energy effi cient storage. It reduces power consumption and minimises heat, which are both critical issues for both enterprise storage and data centres. The tiered storage architecture also minimises power consumption, by distributing data to the most appropriate storage ‘section’ or ‘layer’.


Given the current technical capabilities, market factors and application requirements, eSSDs and HDDs will co-exist for some time to come. Both complement each other perfectly in an enterprise environment to deliver an innovative storage solution. By allocating data according to access needs, businesses can manage an effective and effi cient tiered storage solution for all their data storage needs.


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