IT managers are falling in love with SSDs (solid state drives) in enterprise servers because they solve two major headaches: they run so fast they can replace multiple HDDs (hard disk drives) and they reduce electricity bills.

The benefits of SSDs, which are made from flash memory chips and have no moving parts, are even helping many IT managers get over their initial sticker shock, says Jim Handy, lead storage analyst at Objective Analysis.

The key is speed, as measured in IOPS (input/outputs per second). Many IT managers, particularly those at banks, stock brokerages or with other transaction-type needs, have so much trouble with HDD speeds that they hook up several HDDs to one enterprise server in order to increase IOPS.

"With a single SSD they can get rid of a hookup like this altogether, replacing 10 HDDs in many cases, but I heard of one extreme case where one SSD replaced 38 enterprise HDDs," Handy said.

An enterprise SSD can cost from $5,000 (2,500) to $10,000, depending on capacity, but if it can replace the need for ten enterprise HDDs, which cost around $350 to $1,200 each, an IT manager has already recouped their investment. Tack on energy savings over time, and SSDs appear even more attractive.

STEC, one of the early leaders in SSDs for enterprise servers, makes one in a common HDD capacity, 146GB, along with a drive half that size. Other companies, such as BiTMICRO Networks and Micron Technology also offer enterprise SSDs.

Companies running large data centers are at the forefront of replacing HDDs with SSDs in enterprise servers, Handy said, often replacing thousands of HDDs with a hundred or more SSDs.

In one example, he said a company providing video on demand (VOD) was able to replace 16 HDDs with one SDD in enterprise servers at their data center, gaining space and cooling savings along with initial cost savings.

The trend has sent sales of SSDs for enterprise servers rocketing.

Objective Analysis predicts unit shipments of SSDs for the enterprise will rise 151 percent per year through 2013.

Tags: Hard Drive Backup Sports Store Records Storage Shared Storage Portable Hard Drive Food Storage Data Storage Companies Digital Storage Network Storage Hard Drive

Microsoft To Unveil New Licensing Policies For Virtual Machines
Virtualization industry observers expect Microsoft to eliminate a licensing restriction that has hampered the mobility of virtual servers, perhaps as soon as next week.Under current Microsoft rules, software running on a virtual machine is licensed based on the physical server. This can be problematic because of technologies such as VMware's VMotion, which can move virtual machines from one physical server to ...

Storage Vendors Earnings Show Array Makers Healthiest
Vendors report their revenues and net income/loss each quarter and their change since the same quarter a year ago.There are three situations in which we get concerned about a storage vendor. The first of these is declining revenues. Giving us more reason to worry is declining revenue and falling net income. What sets the alarm bells ringing is an increased net loss coupled with slumping revenues. It means the ...

Falconstor Ezstart Program Provides Channel Partners A Revolutionary New Way To Build And Deliver
FalconStor Software, Inc., the provider of TOTALLY Open data protection solutions, recently announced the launch of the FalconStor EZStart Program, allowing authorized solution provider partners to quickly and easily build, market and support FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS), FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP), and FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with ...