The Future For Solid State Technology On Server Motherboards

from the memories,-like-the-corners-of-my-mind dept

Mon, Nov 30th 2009 3:05pm — ITInnovation

For the past several months, the possibilities of solid state technology have been explored for all sorts of applications. Some observers note that solid state technology inside the server are on the way, but others point out that solid state technology might still be too expensive for typical server applications. As the costs inevitably come down, though, the more important questions might be more along the lines of "where should solid state technology be located to maximize ROI?" or "how can solid state technology be used most effectively?" The use of solid state technology in a variety of new configurations will ultimately depend on the cost effectiveness of the applications, but the potential of 1 million IOPs in the performance of a single server over storage racks filled with thousands of hard drives could be getting a lot harder to pass up.

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Greg O'Keefe - Intel (profile), 2 Dec 2009 @ 10:01am

Different types of solid state techology available for servers today
There are many different solid state (flash) technlogies being introduced into the market today. If you aren't familar with the Intel X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drives (SSD), I'd recommend you evaluating them for your data center deployments for hybrid storage pools. This is a huge change from existing HDD technology.

Intel SSDs are available in every Sun server based on Intel Xeon processor. www.sun.com/intel
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Devin Moore (profile), 7 Dec 2009 @ 2:41pm

no moving parts
IMHO, the true savings of solid-state would be in the lack of moving parts that could fail vs. some speed increase. If a robust solid-state HDD, power supply, etc. could be built so that the pc had absolutely no moving parts, that should yield a much longer shelf life, meaning a much lower total cost of ownership if you have 100,000 of them in a datacenter, right?
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Mac McConnell (profile), 8 Dec 2009 @ 10:16am

Re: no moving parts
Devin, you are correct. Beyond the risk of mechanical failure being near zero, Solid-state drives also provide improved overall system responsiveness while consuming much less power than a traditional hard disk drive. This translates into a cooler, quieter platform.

Mac McConnell from Sun Microsystems.
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Greg O'Keefe - Intel (profile), 8 Dec 2009 @ 10:33pm

Re: no moving parts
Devin - Solid-State Drives provide more value than just the fact that they don't have moving parts like HDDs for higher reliability. That is only the starting poitns - there are additional points such as improved energy efficiency, faster performance and lower costs per IOPs than HDDs.

Greg O'Keefe - Intel
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