The performance and technical characteristics of Flash memory make it a perfect companion to the data center infrastructure.
Above all the main attraction of Flash memory is its performance. For many years the increases in processor and memory performance have far outstripped those of hard disks, which, historically, have been the principal means of fast access storage of large data volumes. Flash memory fills an important gap between memory and hard disk performance.
Over the last 30 years processor performance has improved by an average of 50% per year, far outstripping the 28% year on year increases in hard disk performance. Even worse, in terms of the number of operations per second there has been more or less no improvement in hard disk performance over the last 10 years . Additionally a 10,000 RPM enterprise disk still falls woefully short of even 150 IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) in multiple access mode, and a SATA disk barely reaches 70 or 80 IOPS. In effect, the last 10 years have witnessed almost zero performance gains in hard disk technology while processor performance has improved 100 fold!
One can see similar problems if one examines improvements in latency. Over the last 25 years the gains in disk performance have been, at best, comparatively modest. According to Seagate, an enterprise disk in 1987 had an access time of approximately 60 ms in 1987. Today a 15,000 RPM enterprise disk can offer a 5ms latency, while a 7,200 SATA disk can achieve 9ms. While a 6-12 times performance improvement may at first seem impressive, it is important to understand that, in the same period, average memory latency has been divided by 100,000 so that it is now less than 1 nanosecond, and straight through processor performance as measured in FLOPS has increased by tens of millions.
The result of all of this is an ever increasing performance disparity. On the one hand, hard disk performance remains fixed in the last millenium, while on the other hand processor and memory performance continue to accelerate into the stratosphere. It is always the case that the slowest component will limit the performance of the whole infrastructure, but the performance bottleneck created by increasingly outdated hard disk technology is in danger of strangling the data access of an entire data center.
This situation is changing. According to IDC 80% of storage peripherals delivered in 2015 were Flash compatible. We can now really say that we have entered the era of the “Flash Transformed Data Center”! What are the benefits of this change? Installed in servers, infrastructure and network storage, Flash technology allows much faster data retrieval which in turn permits far more complex processing, greater levels of security and even a greater respect for the environment. Flash technology accelerates the performance of Cloud based applications and allows large data volumes to be processed without the I/O (Input / Output) penalties traditionally associated with hard disks. The technology also permits rapid analysis of big data and the extraction of trends hidden in the corporate databases.
Within the Cloud domain CSPs (Cloud Service Providers) are major users of Flash technology, again primarily for the performance advantages that it brings. This allows them to add value to their services and this trend will only increase as data centers outsource ever increasing volumes of work to CSPs or colocation providers via Cloud technology.
Elsewhere Flash technology is improving enterprise security through much faster data analysis. In the information age the biggest threats to organisations are primarily digital, and the numerous applications designed to combat these threats share a common challenge : a constant increase in the amount of data to analyse, and at the same time a constant decrease in the amount of time available to do so. Additionally Flash technology resolves the CPU security and compatibility problems traditionally associated with databases, and this also reduces analysis time and accelerates automated response times.
The final advantage is in reduced energy consumption. Gartner estimate that within 2 years more than 50% of data centers will consume over 6Kw per rack, and one year later that figure will leap to 70%. Even if this is partly explained by an increase in the density of equipment in the racks, that doesn’t make this increased energy consumption any more supportable. One of the main ways to reverse this trend is an increase in the deployment of Flash technology, which will permit energy savings of up to 90% while at the same time offering far superior performance and reducing running costs.
As long as it continues to be deployed in server and storage environments, the continued adoption of Flash technology means that it will play a decisive role in tomorrow’s information world.
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