SSD vs HDD RAID in Servers and Storage

SSDs in servers deliver performance, whether measured in IOPS or GBps or latency, that is just plain impossible with disks. SSD capacity is now greater than that of performance disks. Price is the factor that still keeps many organizations away from deploying servers with SSD storage when the improved performance is not a significant benefit. The better reliability of SSD might be more important. Continue reading SSD vs HDD RAID in Servers and Storage

Thin Provisioning: Nondeterministic Storage Feature #2

Much of modern storage management focuses on efficient use and allocation of storage capacity.  “Thin provisioning” is a primary mechanism for this, allocating just enough space to match each consumer‘s current needs, while promising more capacity when needed.  Thin provisioning is an effective tool for allocation of storage capacity.  When latency, bandwidth and IOPS are more important, thin provisioning makes these performance results nondeterministic.  Continue reading Thin Provisioning: Nondeterministic Storage Feature #2

SSD RAID

There are many opinions on the benefits and liabilities of SSD RAID floating around the Internet; ION’s experience with SSD RAID differs dramatically from some of it.  ION’s SR-71mach4 SpeedServer™ is a server and storage platform optimized for and with SSD RAID.  This article shares some observations on the performance and endurance of SSDs in RAID usage, and examines and compares performance in different Continue reading SSD RAID