The advent of multi-core processors has also provided a big boost to deeper penetration of server virtualization in the data center. For example, a 4-core processor based server can now host four virtual machines on the same physical server – one on each core – thus consolidating four workloads that were running on four different physical servers onto one physical server.
The key implication of this development is that each physical server is clearly processing more data and generating orders of magnitude higher network traffic than in the past. Diskbased storage with sequential read-write is inadequate to extract data out of these servers fast enough creating a data supply problem on the server. NAND Flash-based Storage, which allows random read-write and hence offers an order of magnitude improvement in Storage performance in terms of IOPS (input output operations per second), bandwidth and latency, has emerged as a viable solution to this problem.
Where was Flash Storage First Employed ?
Not surprisingly again, it was the hyper-scale market (Facebook and Google) that figured out a way to use Flash extensively to mitigate the data supply problem arising out of the use of multi-core processors. Although we admit the Enterprise has also seen some penetration into high-performance transactional use cases, we believe overall penetration of Primary Storage is still below the 10% mark.
With NAND Flash prices below $1/Gb and advances of software such as Flash-based deduplication and compression, we believe the price of Flash-based storage systems is at an acceptable level per Gb of Storage – a typical metric used by the Enterprise to evaluate Storage systems. Besides, the broader availability of “Enterprise class” Flash-based storage systems from both the tier-1 majors and smaller private/recently public companies are driving faster adoption of Flash based Storage in the enterprise. The benefits of Flash in terms of performance, power and reliability are now well known to Enterprise IT.
The adoption of Flash in the Enterprise will have the same effect on Enterprise Storage as the effect of multi-core processors on the Server market – a decline in the overall size of the market driven by a smaller hardware footprint compared to disk based systems. Considering that Primary Storage is at a base level really about the number of transactions or IOPS (input output operations per second) supported by the System and NAND Flash per Gb of Storage can support an order of magnitude higher IOPS compared to HDDs, we believe Flash based Storage should result in a significant reduction in the Primary Storage Hardware footprint when Flash Storage achieves more meaningful penetration levels in Storage.
Image Courtesy: EMC Corporate Facebook