SSD Technology Changes Data Storage

Today the enterprise used flash-based SSDs in two main ways; as a caching tier for servers or as a storage tier. Flash allows organizations to capture the full value from their server investment, however, as mentioned in this report on Data Center Journal, the problem with flash as a storage tier is the limitations of the current storage controllers.

---

"Ironically, organizations spend considerable money to buy the fastest servers only to discover they are constrained by the storage. Flash, however, allows organizations to capture the full value from their server investment.

"There are two general uses for flash-based SSD in the enterprise IT stack today: as a caching tier for the servers or as a storage tier. The problem with flash as a storage tier is the limitations of the current crop of storage controllers. Current controllers can only handle a limited amount of HDDs before they are saturated. A bunch of flash drives as a storage partition will easily over saturate today's controllers' bandwidth. Consequently one of the best places for flash today is as a storage tier sitting directly on the computer's PCI bus."

Read the Full Story at Data Center Journal