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Crafted For Compatibility

Enterprise SSDs: Are You Asking Too Much From Client Drives?
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#4) Crafted For Compatibility

Enterprises excel at implementing custom solutions. This applies to hardware and software alike and often a blending of the two. Every solution requires testing, validation, and training, but custom applications typically need even more. IT managers love tried and true components and code because they make the job of validation easier. New elements mean fresh complexity and higher learning time, and nobody wants that.

In the enterprise drive world, code operates within storage devices and interacts with controllers and applications. On one level, there is physical interoperability, as with SAS controllers being interoperable with SATA drives. But there’s also code-level interoperability, and this gets murkier.

Drive code tends to persist and evolve slowly over time. Seagate has been making enterprise hard disks since the 1980s, and much of the code that went into those ancient models persisted on through the Cheetah families and even into the latest Pulsar SSD models. When everyone from controller engineers to systems OEMs to in-house enterprise application qualifiers spends decades validating a code base, that establishes a level of assurance and reliability that won’t be matched by an upstart storage vendor.

Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) incorporate controllers able to perform on-drive AES encryption independent of any help from the CPU.Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) incorporate controllers able to perform on-drive AES encryption independent of any help from the CPU.

Compatibility can also pertain to how certain features get implemented in storage platforms. For example, consider AES encryption. The AES cryptographic algorithm is effectively set in stone, but the ways in which vendors implement it is not. Particularly when considering drive management across disparate system groups, there could be issues if vendor A implements its AES full-disk encryption functionality in a different way than vendor B. Again, this is unlikely to appear on a spec sheet. IT will usually discover such discrepancies the hard way—when troubleshooting.

Every IT group wants to increase service levels and functionality while reducing complexity and resource demand. Paying more attention to compatibility can help achieve this.

Stay Tuned

In the coming weeks, we will take deeper dives into each of these subjects. Our goal is to make sure that every reader walks away with a working knowledge of what defines an “enterprise” drive and differentiates it from other options. Armed with this information, you will be able to better judge the actual value of specific storage devices within your organization, narrow your purchasing options considerably, and make sure that your final drive picks will be the ones that deliver maximum ROI in the years to come.