Patrick Smith, CTO EMEA at Pure Storage, explains how building an all-flash data center represents an affordable and sustainable type of innovation.
Simplicity and innovation are the foundations on which John ‘Coz’ Colgrove created Pure Storage in 2009 with the intention of combining these principles with the diffusion of flash storage to pursue the creation of an all-flash data center.
An innovative vision
Today the advantages of flash technology over legacy disk-based storage are well known. At the time, however, the biggest obstacles to its implementation were related to acquisition costs, management costs and the difficulty of integrating it into the data lifecycle.
It’s only been a few years since then and flash technology has become the choice of choice in any performance or latency sensitive workload. Since its introduction into enterprise storage, flash memory has begun to replace tiers of hard drives one by one. Market conditions indicate that the move to an all-flash data center is no longer a vision but a reality.
There are many good reasons why the time of all-flash has arrived: managing data growth, cost parity between flash and disk, clear savings in terms of sustainability. Here are a few reasons why flash technology is bound to make disks disappear forever:
Growth of unstructured data
Running out of capacity or not having additional resources is every IT manager’s nightmare. Instead, his greatest aspiration is to derive value and insight from every minimum data. Unstructured data is projected to grow 10-fold before 2030 as it continues on its exponential growth trajectory. Enterprises must consider how to use them, and flash technology changes the dynamics of big data analytics, data lakes, content repositories, and even backup and recovery solutions.
The cost of NAND memories
The per-bit cost of NAND flash memory is declining much faster than that of nearline hard drives. While the cost-per-bit of a hard drive is still lower than the densest flash memory in existence, there are still some trends to watch out for throughout 2023. First, all the major tier 1 flash manufacturers are demonstrating dramatic increases in density this year, in some cases reaching over 200 three-dimensionally stacked NAND memory layers. This increase in density will result in higher economic efficiency as well as further improvements in space and power savings within datacenters. Second, if analyst forecasts are true, NAND memory prices are expected to decline for most of 2023, continuing a trend that started in late 2022.
Flash as an environmental choice
Data center infrastructures account for more than 1% of global energy consumption, a share that is also growing. Companies are much more attentive to their CO2 emissions and many of them need to find solutions to reduce them. Flash technology makes an essential contribution to reducing energy consumption.
Unstructured data is complex and energy intensive, while disks are inefficient and take up space. Combining the two creates growing problems for data centers, business bottom lines, and the environment.
Energy consumption may not have been a major factor in moving datasets in the past, but considering the increasing unpredictability of energy availability and the increased focus on reducing emissions, it becomes an investment in the future that we can’t afford not to make.
As a result of rising energy costs, IT-related electricity consumption has become not only an environmental but also an economic concern.
Energy efficiency has become a major factor in enabling flash technology to achieve a lower TCO than disk in the future.
More performance
In some companies, the primary decision criteria are those related to costs rather than performance. In this case, the performance advantages of flash technology compared to disks can still translate into economic benefits.
First, because disk performance remains limited even on workloads with modest performance requirements, enterprises often end up with unused capacity. Although a spinning disk may contain 20TB, if the system performance reaches 16TB it loses its cost-per-bit effectiveness. Flash technology doesn’t have this problem because performance remains predictable even as usage increases, unlike hard drives.
Second, the storage environment must be resilient and therefore requires a redundancy strategy that avoids the risk of data loss. With flash devices, faster rebuild times mean fewer bits dedicated to resiliency structures, which leads to higher cost efficiency.
Third, during backup and post-ransomware recovery disks can take an inordinate amount of time to restore data. With flash-based systems, however, the faster recovery performance means that the business can be back up and running sooner than with legacy disk architectures.
Finally, greater resilience goes hand in hand with superior reliability. Compared to mechanical disks, flash is simply more reliable: devices fail less often requiring fewer replacements and therefore lower costs, less time wasted replacing failed components, less risk, and no out-of-control maintenance costs starting in the fourth or fifth year.
The road that leads to all-flash
Many enterprises are already well along their journey to all-flash, deploying flash-based storage platforms for performance-hungry workloads where speed means business value. These are cases such as databases, private clouds and, increasingly, modern analytics environments. Companies that have equipped themselves with modern all-flash platforms are reaping the relative advantages in terms of performance, server efficiency, greatly simplified operations, energy efficiency and consequent reductions in greenhouse gases.
For companies looking to start migrating to an all-flash data center, here are some helpful considerations. You need to have a solid strategy that supports your business goals and evaluates elements such as:
Analysis of business needs and related all-flash support Assessment of total cost of ownership (TCO) and expected return on investment (ROI) Assessment of the overall business scenario including regulations, protection and data residency Timescales required to define and test a solution Timescales required to migrate data, including end-of-life assessment of existing legacy equipment
In addition, the ability to consume all-flash for petabyte-scale unstructured workloads through a subscription model allows users to grow with their business. A flexible, cloud-like Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) model should include strict, binding Service Level Agreements (SLAs) on everything related to administrative support, day-to-day management, and energy consumption. This leads to further operational efficiency, further widening the gap with respect to legacy platforms. Migrations can be complex but, with the support of the right vendor and partner, they can be painless. A proof-of-concept project will allow companies to see the technology in action, verify the benefits and define the right solution.
A vision accomplished: flash is the right choice for environmental, economic and workload reasons
The simple truth is that no one buys hard drives anymore because they are better devices, but only because they cost less. Flash memory is superior to magneto-mechanical drives in almost every respect, and the benefits continue to grow even though flash is already a better option. Flash technology has become a suitable option for normal everyday workloads, offering companies a better way to manage data growth efficiently, reliably and sustainably.
The point of disadvantage of flash technology compared to disks was in cost, but today the point of parity between disks and flash is imminent. Combined with energy, space and cooling savings, superior performance and improved reliability, this will lead to hard drives quickly becoming the least cost-effective option. The dream of an all-flash data center has become a reality for modern, forward-thinking businesses.