In the last few years, the price of solid state storage has been driven down by consumers' insatiable demands for small, portable electronic devices. As a result, there's been an upswing in interest in replacing hard drives with solid state storage drives (SSDs) in laptop, desktop, server and enterprise storage systems.
Some SSD characteristics make it appealing for some applications, but the current generation of products needs to improve more and cost less to earn broader appeal. So, any pronouncements that solid state is going to replace spinning disks in the near future are premature.
Solid state storage uses semiconductor memory. It’s not optical or magnetic—unlike most of the drives in use today—and that means solid state storage devices have no spinning disks, which leads to:
Solid state storage offers the potential to make data centers more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Solid state devices have a significantly better performance-to-power rating than traditional hard disk drives. And unlike traditional hard drives, SSDs can shift to very low power modes quickly and return to full performance, without the penalty of delays associated with waiting for a disk to spin back up. This lower average power consumption reduces the demands on the data center to cool systems that use solid state technologies.
Along with the power advantage, solid state storage packs the operating performance of several hard disks into the same space as a single hard disk, providing an opportunity for more processing capability within an existing data center.
In addition to the potential benefits, limitations such as high cost and lifespan perceptions keep solid state storage technology from taking over rapidly.
Solid state disks cost more to acquire than hard drives. Although SSDs can offer a lower cost per input/output per second, the relatively new entrance of some types of solid state technologies into the enterprise sector—coupled with perceived uncertainties about wear-out and reliability—also limit SSD proliferation.
Without proper over-provisioning of flash memory and adequate wear-leveling techniques, SSDs can have shorter life spans than comparable hard drives. While hard disks eventually fail because mechanical parts wear out, solid state memory can be written to only a finite number of times before it is "used up.” In that sense, SSDs are more like consumables than hard drives and require a different model for purchase, support and use in the enterprise.
Enterprises can use solid state storage several ways. It might make up part of the first tier in a tiered storage environment, where the speed and volume of I/Os per second are paramount and cost per gigabyte is a lesser concern.
In addition, a number of industry-specific scenarios are good candidates for the high performance and low power consumption of solid state storage, including:
Every spinning disk is technically a candidate to be replaced by a solid state disk, but will it happen? Maybe someday, but not anytime soon.
Hard drives remain the most commonly used storage technology and the one that makes the most economic and operational sense in the broadest number of situations.
Still, there is no doubt solid state technology is evolving and we are evolving the full portfolio of HP products along with it—from enterprise to consumer and from servers to storage solutions and notebooks—where it makes the most sense. Testing a broad range of solid state technologies allows us to put them to carefully-considered, selective uses where they offer the clearest benefits to your applications.
In the meantime, don’t believe all the hype. While solid state storage will clearly offer benefits in some situations, it's not a panacea. At HP, we will continue to develop solutions that meet the real-world demands of your business.
