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Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - November 11, 2011
That's a question asked recently by
an analyst in an investment bank. This is of what I said.
Unfortunately
my time budget for phone calls is restricted to CEOs of SSD companies. But I
can give you a few minutes on email.
Both PCIe and FC SAN / IP SAN
rackmount SSDs can coexist in the same customer application. Just because a
user starts with one doesnt preclude the other.
My March 2010
article
this way to the
petabyte SSD noted there will be 3 distinct types of enterprise SSD in the
future datacenter . Since then I've expanded this model to add more detail and
sub-segments - but overall I think
7 main SSD types
will satisfy all future enterprise needs.
PCIe SSDs make the
locally attached server faster. But SAN SSDs (including
Infiniband) will
always be needed for environments (legacy command and control business
architectures) where data is shared across more than a threshold number of
servers. Another complication is that a PCIe SSD itself can be a component
inside a rack such as bunch of cards rack (Nextio) or as an internal
cache (NexGen). This is
what I call open / COTS array architecture discussed here-
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-rk-trends.html
There are differences in logistics for customers.
Is a
rack or a card the replacement unit? (if there's a fault)
Different
sites will have different preferences.
It is technically possible to
design hot replaceable PCIe SSD modules. The concept has been shown to work by
OCZ and
SANRAD but standards on
form factors take years to get established so for now the PCIe SSD market is
based on cards. If I have to leave you with 1 single idea about the
enterprise SSD market its is that no single vendor or technology will be the
ideal solution for the enterprise.
The range of SSD latencies in the pure SSD datacenter of the future
will vary by more than 1,000 to 1.
Design differences mean that the fastest SSD in the user site will
always cost
significantly more than the higher tiered SSDs.
Auto-tiering
will be even more important in the 100% SSD environment. One result from my
model is that it is important for SSD oems to understand which market silos they
fit in.
If they stray outside (or are unaware of where the market
is heading) their technology and marketing will be inefficient compared to
companies who have optimized their business (by plan or accident) for the model.
Just because Violin sells more SAN rackmounts doesn't mean that FIO
will sell less cards for example.
Selling more PCIe SSDs actually
increases future upstream demand for other types of SSDs. Because an SSD
accelerated server just looks like a faster server.
Hope that helps
Editor's later notes
Decentralization - is an
interesting concept which Fusion-io used in a
recent
S1 filing document to describe their company - "We have pioneered a
next generation storage memory platform for data decentralization."
Without
going into too much more detail you can think about this as follows.
Why
do users use lots of servers?
Because one server isn't fast enough to
do everything they want to do.
But when you have lots of servers - they
often need to access the same data. That's how you get into
network storage
architecture - SANs,
NAS etc.
With data
- one step removed - the result is longer access times, more complicated
backup, management etc.
If
you can make a single server run apps 10x or 20x or 100x
faster - by stuffing it with high capacity, low latency SSD - then
you don't need so many
servers (2003 SSD market model).
So in that context - of a medium
size installation - what I said at the start of this article isn't strictly true
- because you could remove the need for a SAN by crunching up all these "no
longer needed" servers and SAN storage into a single box that's easier to
replicate.
But what I said later in the email is also true. Because
you'd soon find other things you could do to leverage that data. So before too
long you'd be adding the SAN and more rackmount storage back on. And this time
all the new elements would have to run a lot faster to service the higher IOPS
demands of the PCIe SSD accelerated apps hosts.
related articles
the SSD Heresies
the New Business Case
for SSD ASAPs
2012
- Year of the Enterprise SSD Goldrush
StorageSearch talks SSD
with Holly Frost, CEO, Texas Memory Systems
will the
enterprise SSD market be big enough for all these companies [list] to grow? | | |
| ....... |
 | |
| ....... |
|
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| ....... |
If Megabyte spent less time on email
he'd get more SSD
articles written. | |
| ....... |
 |
| . |
| "I don't see a
picture of memory chip arrays connected to a processor bus through cloned
controllers. Instead I see greater differences emerging than we're seeing today." |
| ......from:-
don't all PCIe SSDs
look pretty much the same? | | |
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| "By 2016 I expect
that upto 50% of the searches for rackmount SSD will be driven by the
need to find the lowest cost storage capacity - instead of (as today)
98% being driven by the need for faster storage performance." |
| ......from a new article about -
Rackmount SSDs | | |
| . |
 |
| . |
| "...we address the
toughest problem in front of IT today, where do I put my flash?!! Flash can go
in so many places it makes your head spin, and the more places you put it, the
harder it is to manage it. Fusion IO is telling you to put it in your
server, your storage array companies are saying to add it to their already
overtaxed storage arrays and use tiering software to figure out your hot data
and migrate it there.." |
| ...from:-
Hot
Rods are Cool Again for Big Data - GridIron blog -
April 2012 | | | |
