SSD vs. HDD – The Macroeconomic Arguments
Posted by
Lee Johns on Tue, Feb 19, 2013 @ 09:25 AM
As the Storage market embraces SSD and flash there is the constant question of how long will it take for SSDs to replace hard disk drives. There are a lot of opinions about when folks will be all flash in the data center and most of those opinions are based on conjecture rather than fact.
In a recent article in The Virtualization Journal, Tom Major, President and COO of Starboard Storage Systems, outlined some of the real macroeconomic issues facing the industry and outlines why both SSD and HDD will co-exist for a long time to come. Tom has a unique insight having spent many years at Seagate. In his article “SSD vs. HDD – The Battle for the Future of Storage”, Tom discusses, SSD Performance advantages, the fast growing worldwide demand for storage capacity, shrinking technology geometries for both HDD and SDD and the pace of decline in SSD pricing.
For instance did you know that, “ Last year approximately 2500 Exabytes of data was created and/or replicated.” … “This needs to be serviced largely by HDDs and SSDs. Last year, the NAND flash industry produced somewhere between 30 and 40 exabytes of storage; with somewhere around 3.5 Exabytes finding its way into SSDs (the balance in phones, tablets, cameras, etc.).”…” that is, 1.4% of our total storage need?”
Or that, “flash production is ramping up... at a capital cost of about $1.5 billion per Exabyte”
Where do these arguments end up? Well, for Tom it means that the best path is a hybrid storage strategy that embraces both SDD and HDD without overprovisioning either technology.
You can read the entire article here http://virtualization.sys-con.com/node/2543229 and make up your own mind.