Is Flash Storage Only Confined to Speed and Performance?

Remember hard disk technology, magnetic hard disks, hardware based storage arrays, fillers and raid technology that fosters block based volumes and file systems? No wonder storage industry has undergone a paradigm shift in terms of technology. Turn back the hands of time and you will realize that this fundamental shift has fuelled up the innovation while disrupting everything that we have known for the past many years. In today’s technology steered storage uprising – three things – flash cloud storage technology, software defined storage, and object-based storage are responsible for the change.

Now with the new line of all flash arrays available, traditional magnetic spinning hard disk is changing at a faster pace. Whereas software defined storage (which is often referred to as white box servers) is striving to locate its position on commodity (X86) based hardware. Technology pundits are showing great faith in this disruptive force, believing that it has the potential to provide cost-efficient commodity based storage option for organization with least flash needs of the conventional hardware based storage arrays. Last but not the least object based storage that aims to provide completely new way to access critical capacity-intensive applications and eliminate geographical boundaries. This means applications can be accessed from anywhere.

The current business scenario pronounces that these three technologies will cause a lot of disruption in the storage industry.

A Brief Note Defining Past and the Present

If reports are to be believed, smorgasbords of benefits are allied with flash storage speaking volumes about its relevance to the present business landscape and all set to replace conventional spinning disk media. It is not only replacing the legacy systems, slothful hard disks, however also serving new ways to manage dynamic workloads so that organizations can innovate quickly and build their strong presence in the market. In past few decades a lot of changes occurred in the physical storage media which is anyway accountable for data storage – from punch cards to paper tape to magnetic tape and magnetic disks. At the outset these magnetic disks were extremely over-sized and you can compare it with a size of a refrigerator. Time files really fast and the hard disks have become smaller in size with the better performance rate. Now we have solid state storage which is technically deployed in the form of solid state disks.

Let’s not get diverted and focus on flash acceleration:

Here is the catch – if you have noticed one thing that changes in storage mediums have led to increased capacity to manage burgeoning workloads while raising the productivity and performance levels with every new change. An amalgamation of productivity, performance and cost savings delivered in every change media has opened up the doors of innovation and differentiation. These attributes are captivation attracting businesses from every nook and cranny to leverage the new media for better cause. But, I would emphasize that this is not where the benefits of flash storage media wraps up – alongside speed and performance, it also helps businesses to mark their indelible presence in the market.

Keep reading! This blog further attempts to explore the various benefits of flash storage:

Digital Ecosystem: Flash media has holistically transformed the digital ecosystem. Remember analog films that were shot on 35mm various sized roll films? Just for your information, these various sized roll films have now been replaced by flash media. Although, analog films no more exist for all practical purposes. It has influenced our day-to-day lifestyles and its will be no wrong to mention that right from the smartphones to Digicam; GPS devices to even spy pens – flash media has plunged to many boundaries.

Trust me, the performance of all these digital gadgets will be not at par with our expectations without flash media. Moving ahead, flash storage will have same impact on data centers – providers leveraging this model will not only manage their workloads efficiently, but also can focus on business impairments for holistic development.

Read More at : Key Reasons to Choose Solid State Drives over Hard Disk Drives

Scale out Capacity: Knitted with many advantageous attributes, flash storage also holds the ability to scale out workload in terms of capacity and performance without entailing any bottlenecks within the controllers. Apparently, architectures designed in a way to foster futuristic growth are fundamental to business sustainability – and flash storage takes the onus to render the same.

Informed Decision Making and Better ROI: I will again emphasize on the point that flash is more than performance and speed. By enabling applications to get quickly accessed by your end-users, partners, employees, and vendors – it accelerates end-user satisfaction and boosts work productivity. Greater work productivity means greater chance to widen revenue streams. And, appeased end-users will have direct impact on your company’s finishing line.

The immense potential of flash improvises decision making by speeding up the transaction applications processing process and provides real time data analytics. Apart from this, it allows minimizing licensing costs and eliminates maintenance costs allied to the number of CPU cores in a server. Technically, by reducing the CPU cores with the help of flash storage – software licensing costs plus maintenance expenses can be taken down.

Lesser Power & Energy Consumption: No wonder flash offers a whole host of benefits to its patrons. Besides boosting fastest decision making, benefactors can also reduce costs associated with data center footprints and energy consumption. Flash storage is extremely dense as compared to terabytes or gigabytes per square meter of your facility, which means you don’t have to lease or procure larger spaces to accommodate enormous amount of data. This was something related to footprints, now let me explain how flash leads to power savings. For your information, flash media consumes less than 60% of energy as compared to the traditional spinning storage. Big savings can be achieved without any fear for data loss.

Finding of 2016 State of Storage in Virtualization Report suggest the major drivers underpinning the flash adoption by businesses.

The Bottom Line

Solid state storage (SSD) is replacing conventional hard disk storage devices at a swifter pace. Line-of-businesses are embracing this fast storage media not only for the sake of speed and performance; however to increase returns on investment, boost decision making, cut down energy and power consumption costs, and innovate. Moreover, the ability to scale out and increase the storage capacity as per the business movement is fundamental to ensure success – and the good news is flash storage succeeds to live up to these cropping demands.  Considering these many advantages – the performance of flash storage is at par with modern requirements, which suggests its bright and exciting future ahead