Solid State Storage: An Expensive but Hefty Performance Boost

A number of factors is bringing flash, in the form of solid-state drives (SSD), into data centers, but not everyone has jumped on the early adoption bandwagon. This Computer World special report, indicates that while SSD prices are declining, SSDs remain much more expensive than hard drives on a cost-per-gigabyte basis. Depending on performance, SSDs can range in cost from $3 to $20 per gigabyte.

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"SSDs are making their way into data centers in several ways. First, most server vendors are offering SSDs as options, either as a replacement for a hard drive or in addition to one. Salt Lake City-based Fusion-IO even offers an SSD on a PCI card. Second, most storage vendors are incorporating SSDs into their systems. EMC Corp., for example, buys SSDs from STEC and incorporates them into its Symmetrix and Clariion products.

"And finally, several companies are building general-use data-access appliances that incorporate SSDs. For instance, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Schooner Information Technology Inc., has developed appliances for the Memcached caching system and for MySQL databases. Rather than targeting specific functions like business analytics or Web caching, as previous data appliances have, Schooner incorporates flash in an appliance that aims to improve performance of the entire data access tier of the data center, explains John Busch, Schooner's chairman and chief technology officer."

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