An industry trends and perspective.

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Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD? Short answer NO not yet.
There is still
a place for traditional storage arraysor appliances particular those with extensive features, functionality and reliability availability serviceability (RAS). In other words, there is still a place for large (and small) storage arrays or appliances including those with SSDs.


Is there a place for newer flash SSD storage systems, appliances and architectures? Yes
Similar to how there is a place for traditional midrange storage arrays or appliances have found their roles vs. traditional higher end so-called enterprise arrays. Think as an example  EMC CLARiiON/VNX or HP EVA/P6000 or HDS AMS/HUS or NetApp FAS or IBM DS5000 or IBM V7000 among others vs. EMC Symmetric/DMX/VMAX or HP P10000/3Par or HDS VSP/USP or IBM DS8000. In addition to traditional enterprise or high-end storage systems and midrange also known as modular, there are also specialized appliances or targets such as for backup/restore and archiving. Also do not forget the
IO performance SSD appliances like those from TMS among others that have been around for a while.



Is the role of large storage systems changing or evolving? Yes
Given their scale and ability to do large amounts of work in a dense footprint, for some the role of these systems is still mission critical tier 1 application and data support. For other environments, their role continues to evolve being used for high-density tier 2 bulk or even near-line storage for on-line access at scale.

Does this mean there is completion between the old and new systems? Yes
In some circumstances as we have seen already with SSD solutions. Some will place as competing or replacements while others as complementing. For example in the
PCIe flash SSD card segment
EMC VFCache is positioned is complementing Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp, Oracle or others storage vs.
FusionIO who positions as a replacement for the above and others. Another scenario is how some SSD vendors have and continue to position their all-flash SSD arrays using either drives or PCIe cards to complement and coexist with other storage systems in an environment (e.g. data center level tiering) vs. as a replacement. Also keep in mind SSD solutions that also support a mix of flash devices and traditional HDDs for capacity and cost savings or cloud access in the same solution.



Does this mean that the industry has adopted all SSD appliances as the state of art?
Avoid confusing
industry adoption or talk with
industry and customer deployment. They are similar, however one is focused on what the industry talks about or discusses as state of art or the future while the other is what customers are doing. Certainly some of the new flash SSD appliance and storage startups such as Solidfire, Nexgen, Violin, Whiptail or veteran TMS among others have promising futures, some of which may actually be in play with the current SSD market shakeout and consolidation.


Does that mean everybody is going SSD?
SSD customer adoption and deployment continues to grow, however so too does the deployment of high-capacity HDDs.


Do SSDs need HDDs, do HDDs need SSDs? Yes
Granted there are environments where needs can be addressed by all of one or the other. However at least near term, there is a very strong market for tiering and mix of SSD, some fast HDDs and lots of high-capacity HDDs to meet various needs including performance, availability, capacity, energy and
economics. After all, there is
no such thing, as a data or information recession yet budgets are tight or being reduced. Likewise,
people and data are living longer.



What does this mean?
If there, were no such thing as a data recession and budgets a non-issue, perhaps everything could move to all flash SSD storage systems. However, we also know that
people and data are living longer along with
changing data life-cycle patterns. There is also the need for performance to close the traditional
data center IO performance to space capacity gap and bottlenecks as well as store and keep data longer.



There will continue to be a need for a mix of high-capacity and high performance. More IO will continue to gravitate towards the IO appliances, however more data will settle in for longer-term retention and continued access as data life-cycle continue to evolve. Watch for more SSD and cache in the large systems, along with higher density SAS-NL (SAS Near Line e.g. high capacity) type drives appearing in those systems.



If you like new shiny new toys or technology (SNTs) to buy, sell or talk about, there will be plenty of those to continue
industry adoption while for those who are focused on
industry deployment, there will be a mix of new, and continued evolution for
implementation.

Related links
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?<br/ >
Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer<br/ >
No Such Thing as an Information Recession<br/ >
Changing Lifecycles & Data Footprint Reduction
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Is SSD dead? No, however some vendors might be
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDD's) getting too big?
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD's) On Endangered Species List?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Par...
Researchers and marketers don't agree on future of nand flash SSD
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part I)
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinnin...

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers Gs