Comments on: Commercial SSDs Are Here? http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/ Understanding the accumulation of data Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:06:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat :: Flash! EMC’s DMX is the New New Thing Again http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/comment-page-1/#comment-2020 Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat :: Flash! EMC’s DMX is the New New Thing Again Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:02:15 +0000 http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/#comment-2020 [...] I’ve long hollered that typical consumer flash drives weren’t suitable for the enterpris..., and EMC has now confirmed that I was right. Rather than slap a commercial flash drive into a storage array and call it a day, EMC and their supplier , STEC, reinvented the flash drive altogether. Please re-read that, and drill it into your head - the new EMC/STEC SSD is an altogether different animal than other flash-based SSDs! [...] [...] I’ve long hollered that typical consumer flash drives weren’t suitable for the enterpris…, and EMC has now confirmed that I was right. Rather than slap a commercial flash drive into a storage array and call it a day, EMC and their supplier , STEC, reinvented the flash drive altogether. Please re-read that, and drill it into your head - the new EMC/STEC SSD is an altogether different animal than other flash-based SSDs! [...]

]]> By: dave_graham http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/comment-page-1/#comment-28 dave_graham Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:41:45 +0000 http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/#comment-28 Stephen, definitely interesting points on the power consumption end. I'm curious to see the positioning of SSDs versus the 2.5" Enterprise drive push we're seeing from Seagate, et al. right now. Obviously, capacities are somewhat limited on the 2.5" drives, but slowly, capacity parity is being reached (250GB SATA drives were announced by Hitachi and Fujitsu recently). Obviously, 10k/15k spindle units will have more power draw than the 7.2K SATA units but, i suspect, when the I/O per watt breakdown is considered, these drives might be more efficient than SSDs. cheers, Dave Stephen,

definitely interesting points on the power consumption end. I’m curious to see the positioning of SSDs versus the 2.5″ Enterprise drive push we’re seeing from Seagate, et al. right now. Obviously, capacities are somewhat limited on the 2.5″ drives, but slowly, capacity parity is being reached (250GB SATA drives were announced by Hitachi and Fujitsu recently). Obviously, 10k/15k spindle units will have more power draw than the 7.2K SATA units but, i suspect, when the I/O per watt breakdown is considered, these drives might be more efficient than SSDs.

cheers,

Dave

]]> By: Stephen http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/comment-page-1/#comment-27 Stephen Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:27:08 +0000 http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/#comment-27 Good point, Dave. These things were announced and "shipped" almost a year ago now - from many companies. I posted this because I saw one myself, which I suppose makes it more real to me! :) As for power, note that the SATA interface takes up half a watt on its own, vastly reducing the power and heat benefits over spinning media. Put it on SAS and it's even worse! True, the chips are efficient, but the interface isn't. Which leads me to assume that any enterprise use of NAND will be in a proprietary form, not a commercial interface like SATA. Thanks for reading and posting! Good point, Dave. These things were announced and “shipped” almost a year ago now - from many companies. I posted this because I saw one myself, which I suppose makes it more real to me! :)

As for power, note that the SATA interface takes up half a watt on its own, vastly reducing the power and heat benefits over spinning media. Put it on SAS and it’s even worse! True, the chips are efficient, but the interface isn’t.

Which leads me to assume that any enterprise use of NAND will be in a proprietary form, not a commercial interface like SATA.

Thanks for reading and posting!

]]> By: dave_graham http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/comment-page-1/#comment-26 dave_graham Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:59:25 +0000 http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/#comment-26 oh, a tertiary point (Gosh, I wish there was an edit button) to your article. SSDs also consume dramatically less power per I/O than convential disk (obviously) and with power being a continual focus at EMC and other companies, it does play very handily into that message. and for the novelty side of things, may i present the Gigabyte Go-Ramdisk-box? (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7563). cheers, Dave oh, a tertiary point (Gosh, I wish there was an edit button) to your article.

SSDs also consume dramatically less power per I/O than convential disk (obviously) and with power being a continual focus at EMC and other companies, it does play very handily into that message.

and for the novelty side of things, may i present the Gigabyte Go-Ramdisk-box? (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7563).

cheers,

Dave

]]> By: dave_graham http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/comment-page-1/#comment-25 dave_graham Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:53:50 +0000 http://blog.fosketts.net/2007/08/14/commercial-ssds-are-here/#comment-25 Steve, longtime reader here and finally got around to registering. Just a couple of quick notes. Adtron actually debuted their SSD solutions before PQI and SanDisk (http://www.dailytech.com/Adtron+Announces+160GB+Solidstate+Drive/article6220.htm) with PQI stating they were going to bring 256GB devices to the market. It's all marketing, for sure, as channel availability is absolutely abysmal and cost factors per GB are exhorbitantly high. Also during the past couple of years, I was fortunate enough to have Van Smith (VIA EPIA platform engineer) provide a FileCopy utility that allowed me to generate scalable file size (text) and do as many reads/writes from source to target as possible. It's a great tool for judging the longevity of SSD devices (or NAND in general). Anyhow, thought those were interesting side points! Keep up the good work! cheers, Dave Steve, longtime reader here and finally got around to registering.

Just a couple of quick notes. Adtron actually debuted their SSD solutions before PQI and SanDisk (http://www.dailytech.com/Adtron+Announces+160GB+Solidstate+Drive/article6220.htm) with PQI stating they were going to bring 256GB devices to the market. It’s all marketing, for sure, as channel availability is absolutely abysmal and cost factors per GB are exhorbitantly high.

Also during the past couple of years, I was fortunate enough to have Van Smith (VIA EPIA platform engineer) provide a FileCopy utility that allowed me to generate scalable file size (text) and do as many reads/writes from source to target as possible. It’s a great tool for judging the longevity of SSD devices (or NAND in general).

Anyhow, thought those were interesting side points! Keep up the good work!

cheers,

Dave

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