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Phil Goodwin, Contributor Published: 18 Oct 2012
Status report: Solid-state storage

This article is part of the Vol. 10 Num. 8 October 2011 issue of Status report: Solid-state storage

Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storage ecosystem, establishing itself as a viable alternative for high-performance applications. Solid-state disk is, of course, nothing of the sort. Whereas a disk is a round, flat object, solid-state storage is really just memory chips. That may seem like a silly semantic distinction, but it’s actually important to bear that in mind when architecting a data access solution. Solid-state drives (SSDs), also referred to as flash memory and flash cache, have more in common with memory -- specifically cache memory -- than with spinning hard disk drives (HDDs). Although SSDs are commonly deployed “behind the storage-area network (SAN)” and provisioned as part of the total storage pool, they behave like large repositories of cache. That’s important to consider when designing solid-state storage into a storage solution. SSD chip technologies Three solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today: single-level cell (SLC), multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC). This may seem like an... Access >>>

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Features
    • Solid-state goes mainstream by Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

      If a tech is judged by the products that crop up around it and the techs it spawns, then it’s hard to argue that solid-state storage hasn’t reached a certain level of maturity.

    • Status report: Solid-state storage by Phil Goodwin, Contributor

      Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storage ecosystem, establishing itself as a viable alternative for high-performance applications.

    • Storage networking alternatives by Dennis Martin

      All the old standards -- FC, iSCSI and NAS -- are still going strong, but FCoE and virtualized I/O are waiting in the wings to help remake our storage networks.

    • Storage managers poised to tap new technologies by Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

      As budgetary constraints ease, storage shops are looking to emerging techs and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments, data growth and performance demands.

    • Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated by Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

      The number of organizations doing storage tiering today is approximately the same as three years ago, but tiering practices are becoming more sophisticated.

  • Columns
    • Your new storage vendor might be VMware by Arun Taneja, Contributor

      VMware’s latest releases suggest it has serious intentions about encroaching on storage vendors’ turf, which might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry.

    • Data protection implications with cloud services by Lauren Whitehouse, Contributor

      More companies are moving to a cloud model that lets them outsource the underlying cloud infrastructure, and that model has widespread implications for users and data protection.

    • A dialog about VDI and storage by Tony Asaro, Contributor

      A systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice.

    • Solid-state goes mainstream by Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

      If a tech is judged by the products that crop up around it and the techs it spawns, then it’s hard to argue that solid-state storage hasn’t reached a certain level of maturity.

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