Four Considerations for SSD: Putting the Hardware and Software Together

There are many articles out there offering tips for getting the best performance out of SSDs – this isn’t that kind of article. While solid state technology will give users a boost in performance, we’re here to talk about the key to balancing cost and performance.

Solid state technology has been around for decades, and has become more popular in laptops and desktops, especially among power users clamoring for the biggest performance bang for the buck. The word has spread and now businesses are recognizing the advantages of using SSD in the data center to turbo-charge their mission-critical applications. Companies can typically use fewer SSDs compared to the number of traditional spinning disks they’d have to deploy to achieve equivalent performance.

However, not all solid state technology is built the same. The speed of SSDs doesn’t come cheap; in fact the average price per gigabyte (GB) is approximately 10 times more expensive than traditional disks. Before adopting SSDs, users must understand what is driving their performance needs, and which SSD technology configuration is most appropriate for their applications. Here are four hardware and software considerations for SSD.

1. The need for speed: Are SSDs the answer?

IDC’s study, “Worldwide Solid State Drive 2007-2012 Forecast and Analysis: Entering the No-Spin Zone,� forecasts the market for SSD will grow 70 percent between 2007 and 2012, but adoption of a new storage infrastructure will not happen overnight. IT managers considering solid state technology have to ask themselves a big question as they contemplate upgrades: “What does my organization want to achieve?� The resounding answer is increased performance, and lower latency.

SSD technology provides the power to significantly increase IOPS for the most demanding applications. It also frees up overtaxed traditional drives in tiered storage environments to function at maximum ability. Tiered storage moves data between high-performance, low capacity drives and slower, higher-capacity drives. However, integrating SSDs into an environment not optimized for the technology can be a lot like fitting a square peg into a round hole.

To balance speed and cost, you should start small without having to purchase a lot of SSDs up front. Make sure you can maximize storage utilization of SSDs by combining the drives with key virtualization applications. See if you can integrate the new technology in your existing array or if you need to install another “brick� or array to use SSD. Without the right infrastructure, the drives can quickly become too costly, difficult to manage and inefficient compared to traditional spinning media. When you’re evaluating SSDs check with your vendor candidates to determine how SSDs can be integrated into their existing system, and how to maximize functionality.

2. Drive vs.

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