FINAL WORD
A CIOs GUIDE TO
MOVING TO FLASH
STORAGE
Although the majority of storage systems installed around
the world are still based on hard disks, a recent 451 Research
report determined that flash storage is rapidly catching up,
and is now no longer a rarity in the computer centre, but
mainstream, writes Mohammad Dualeh, Regional Sales
Manager, MENA, Pure Storage.
T
he American market researcher firm
anticipates that the sales figures will
double this year compared to 2014,
and that in the next two to three years
half of all large companies will utilize flash
storage. Flash storage is also used for an
increasing number of applications, and no
longer just for performance-hungry, mission
critical databases.
Flash storage is available in various types of
storage array. Sometimes the high-speed
storage is used as a tiered I/O accelerator
mixed within conventional hard-disk-based
systems. In other cases it is employed purely
as the only storage tier. But which option is
the better choice? What benefits can flash
storage provide, and for which scenarios can
the technology be considered?
All storage arrays are not
built equal
Although flash is a storage medium by
nature, it bears no similarity to hard disk
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INTELLIGENTCIO
in terms of performance, endurance, and
generic behaviour. Usually there are three
variants of the technology available for use
in storage arrays:
1. Hybrid arrays: These systems use
flash as cache or I/O accelerators for
the hard disks employed. Flash storage
increases the performance by buffering
data, which has recently been saved and
fetching and making available the data
which will very probably be called upon in
the near future. Hybrid systems are currently
the predominant storage solutions.
2. Traditional hard disk arrays
upgraded with flash storage: In
these systems, the hard disks have been
replaced by solid state drives (SSDs), which
in turn boost performance.
3. All-flash arrays (AFAs): These
systems are fundamentally designed to
utilize and optimize the performance and
capacity of the flash storage medium.
Many AFAs incorporate features, which are
rarely found or are simply not provided on
traditional systems that were designed for
hard disks. These include features such as
inline data reduction, zero performance
loss in the event of critical failure or
maintenance, and extended SSD longevity.
Flash storage and hard disks display
totally different qualities and one benefit
of the latter is that they are able to store
data at lower costs, per raw gigabyte,
when compared to flash storage. But the
benefits stop there!
While flash storage enables thousands
of IOPS per SSD, hard disks struggle to
provide more than one hundred IOPS
per HDD. Many enterprises choose to get
around this shortcoming of hard disks by
using hybrid arrays – they combine a little
flash storage with a large number of disks
to hide the IOP shortfall of the disks.
www.intelligentcio.com