There have been many innovations in the computing world that have changed the IT profession forever. From the obvious ones like the Internet, to less obvious ones like online help desk software, little iterations, innovations and revolutions rock our profession every day. What is the next one?
Storage is the next big deal
Files are getting bigger. Companies are dealing with video files, project files and employee files that contain more and more digital information. Since the size of the things we store is increasing, the vastness of our storage servers must also increase.
The size of hard drives is increasing rapidly. It is now possible to buy 4TB HDDs on the open market. Whereas before, when hard drives were fairly small, companies would have to store their large data files on tape or across huge RAID systems. Now more informatin can be stored on fewer drives.
The problem lies in that mechanical hard drives fail. Which causes a constant IT struggle to replace and swap out faulty drives. It also means that a proper backup solution is a must (of course that’d be the case no matter the frailty of mechanical hard drives). As every IT Helpdesk system team member knows, it’s not if a hard drive will fail, it is when it will fail.
The solution, besides iterating on the current hard drive design, is Solid State Drives or SSDs. Basically an SSD is a hard drive with no moving parts. A traditional hard drive relies on spinning disks that can fail overtime or become damaged. SSDs have no moving parts to fail, they rely on Flash storage. Think of it like permanent RAM.
SSDs have many advantages
SSDs are the future of hard drives. Not only do they fail less often than traditional mechanical hard disks, but they are also faster by several multitudes (SSD performance is much higher than HDD performance). This means that the data transfer speed will also be increased several fold. We are already seeing things like USB 3.0 and Apple’s Thunderbolt technology (originally developed by Intel), take off to accommodate the higher speeds of these SSD drives. We’re even seeing new types of internal specifications like SATA-IO (known as SATA express) to take over for the SATA III standard. So we have the speed factor. SSDs will allow vast amounts of data to be transferred over the intranet much faster than it used to be transferred.
Another advantage is that because SSDs have no moving parts they are built much smaller. This means your storage servers will be able to hold much more storage while taking up less space. And because SSDs do not actually need their own enclosure and can be attached directly to the motherboard, server design will also be able to be iterated, though we will still rely on SSDs that can be replaced. This advantage also come with additional benefits like less heat, which means server rooms will be much cooler. SSDs also use significantly less energy.
And some disadvantages
Like any great thing in life, there are always disadvantages too. Starting off with the big one, SSDs are very expensive. Any new technology is always expensive when it first becomes popular. As these drives get easier to make, they will come down in price. To go along with the price of the drives, the size of the drives is proportional to its cost, and the sizes are not nearly as large as that of mechanical hard drives. While 2 and 3TB SSD drives are available, they are ridiculously expensive.
Another disadvantage is that along with the cost of the drives themselves, the infrastructure and computer hardware will also have to be improved and be replaced in order to see the full benefits of the SSD upgrade. Using an SSD while transferring over the outdated USB 2.0 standard will not result in anything but slow data transfer rates. For companies that have outdated or infrequently updated infrastructure, servers and fiber will need to be replaced and upgraded in order to use SSDs.
Conclusion
SSDs are the future. The question is when will they start being the norm? They already are in consumer electronics. Apple has switched almost exclusively to SSDs in their computers and Windows PCs will also be following that trend. In enterprise, it will take much longer. It isn’t a terrible thing to spend $500 on a drive when you only have to buy one. But when you have to by 1,000 at $500 a pop, that can become a financial challenge for most organizations. In order for SSDs to actually take off, the price of the drives and incorporating them into existing infrastructure will need to come down.
JumpPuppy is a cloud-based IT help desk for IT professionals and MSPs.
http://www.jumppuppy.com