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March 12, 2009 - by
Zsolt Kerekes, editor
StorageSearch.com |
I'm often asked this
question...
"What do you think is going to be the next big
issue in the storage
market?"...
..."Something that's similar in market
impact to
SSDs - but which might only
start to take off after this recession?"
Yikes! - Deep breath. OK
- this is where I say - that's a very good question.
I do find that
trying to find (or invent) plausible answers to such apparently simple
questions is a challenge.
I should know the answer. I spend nearly
all my time thinking about the storage market and discussing it with people
who have the ability to change their own part of it.
I published a 7
year storage market forecast
4 years ago so I thought
I'd dust the cobwebs off the scrolls and see how that prognostication is
holding up today.
The nature of such long range predictions is that
most people don't know what issues they will be grappling with the day after
tomorrow - or even if they will still have a job. So they only get picked up
by a few lonely visionaries - who like editors - have nothing better to do than
stare in their crystal balls - while someone else makes sure that the cash
register is still
ringing (and
connected).
When I enthusiastically start to expound on "Storage
Reliability" with normal people - I get the same reaction as I did when I
was talking about
SSDs in 1998,
or RISC processors
back in 1988 or microprocessors back in 1977. Their eyes glaze over - and they
say politely - "I can't understand why anyone would be interested in this."
Especially
- reliability!
"Yes, yes" they say (trying to shut me up) "I agree
it's a good thing. Much much better than unreliability. Now can we change the
subject... What more is there to say?"
I wouldn't be surprised if
most of you too - thought the same way.
After all - there are 3 more
years to go till 2012. And the
recession and
SSDs are going to dominate the
storage news pages
during most of that time. So there's no need to start worrying about reliability
- just yet. Maybe.
There are many things I could say about
Storage Reliability
- and I have collected together a lot of articles and news stories for those
who are interested.
And for the majority of you (who have better things
to be worrying about right now) I'm sure that when the time is right for you -
you'll come back to this subject.
If your own eyes are still unglazedly
focused in this direction...
One way of thinking about reliability
- is that it works like compound interest. A double digit or triple digit
percentage difference sustained over many years soon starts to mount up to a
substantial saving in resources. That's also why I said it's
green.
Although unlike
quality
- it's not free.
Post Recession Thinking - 2012 to 2013?
One
effect of the recession is that users - looking back with the benefit of
hindsight - will realize that a lot of resources (today) got wasted - and a
lot of data was
trashed - simply because of doing things the way they have always been done
- without questioning the thinking or assumptions behind any of it.
A
whole load of convenient incremental steps can take you to a place that's a
long way from a rational destination. When the spending tap closes shut - every
drip, drip starts to look more interesting and gets scrutinized more intensely.
Happy days will be
here again - but
wiser ones too. ...Storage
Reliability articles & news |
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Later articles with a forward
looking theme include:-
Storage Market Outlook 2010
to 2015 | |
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| There
are
hundreds
of articles about SSDs on StorageSearch.com |
Here, below, are some
examples.
- RAM Cache
Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache
architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
- the pros and cons of
using SSD ASAPs - auto tuning SSD appliances are a new category of SSD
which entered the market in the 2nd half of 2009 to accelerate servers without
needing human tune-ups. How can you tell if they are right for you? And how
well do they work?
- the Problem
with Write IOPS - in flash SSDs - long established as a useful performance
modeling metric - this article explains why some specs are exaggerated when
applied to flash SSDs - or predict the wrong results for many common
applications.
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