In an era where the cloud and the emergence of artificial intelligence utilize cases have increased the value of massive data sets, strenuous drives are more critical than ever to data center operators. Strenuous drives store most of the world’s exabytes (EB), and industry analysts expect strenuous drives to be a major beneficiary of continued EB growth. This will be especially true for enterprises and huge cloud data centers, where most of the world’s data resides.
Proponents of all-flash technology have been claiming for years that “hard drives will soon be a thing of the past” and “the data centers of the future will be all-flash.” These comments have not aged well. Without a doubt, solid-state drives (SSDs) are an critical technology and are well-suited to running applications that require real-time data transfer. However, strenuous drives will continue to be the primary destination for exabytes in data centers.
One myth that resurfaces from time to time is that only flash technology can meet the performance requirements of today’s enterprise workloads. This is often accompanied by an urgent imperative to avoid the risk of being left behind by “simplifying” and “future-proofing” by moving to all-flash systems. In fact, enterprise storage architecture requires a combination of media types to optimize the cost, capacity, and performance of specific workloads. Flash-based zero-sum logic fails for three reasons:
1. Most contemporary workloads do not require the performance advantage offered by flash memory.
Most of the world’s data resides in the cloud and huge data centers. In such environments, workloads follow the Pareto principle: only a petite percentage of the workload requires a significant percentage of performance. Over the past five years, strenuous drives have accounted for nearly 90% of the installed storage base across cloud providers and hyperscale data centers.
2. Businesses must balance efficiency and costs as well as efficiency.
Total cost of ownership considerations are key to most data center infrastructure decisions. This forces a balance between cost, capacity and performance. Optimal total cost of ownership is achieved by matching the most cost-effective media – strenuous drive, flash or tape – to the workload requirements. Strenuous drives remain the most cost-effective option for most enterprise workloads. They have a 6:1 cost per terabyte advantage over SSDs, making disk media the undisputed cornerstone of data center storage infrastructure.
3. The purported simplicity of a single-tier storage architecture is a solution in search of a problem.
Many hybrid storage systems utilize proven and fine-tuned software-defined architectures that seamlessly integrate and leverage the strengths of different media types into single units. Scalable data center architectures in private or public clouds utilize file systems or software-defined storage to manage data storage workloads across data center locations and regions. They offer more than enough flexibility, allowing companies to adjust their warehouse stock based on constantly changing needs.
In summary, cloud, hyperscale, and enterprise storage architectures choose storage that optimizes cost, capacity, and performance. Strenuous drives handle workloads that flash memory shouldn’t. Flash handles workloads that strenuous drives shouldn’t. Both storage media will coexist in the data center, with strenuous drives continuing to dominate in terms of exabytes of storage for the foreseeable future.
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[1] IDC, November 2023
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