The latest popular trend in the enterprise storage world consists of crowds of pundits loudly pontificating that "The end of disk is Nigh!" Lately the noise level has reached a deafening crescendo....another day, another article proclaiming the bloody end of the HDD world at the hands of powerful SSDs.
Reality isn't quite as clear cut. In fact, cold hard statistics specifically state otherwise. SSDs are penetrating the upper end of the performance-based spectrum, but the ongoing data explosion assures there is enough room for both storage mediums, at least for now. In other words, the SSD insurrection is going to take awhile.
The HDD vendors hear footsteps, however, and know they must continue to march forward by increasing HDD density, which reduces cost. Cost is still overwhelmingly in the HDD's favor — in some cases, an enterprise HDD is as low as 3 cents-per-GB, while most enterprise SSDs are well over a dollar.
However, density alone isn't going to save the day. Seagate pioneered the SSHD movement, which infuses a small amount of NAND on an HDD to combine the capacity of an HDD with the explosive performance of an SSD. This move began in the client space for desktop applications, and Seagate transplanted the technology into its high-end 15K HDDs to help boost performance for demanding enterprise workloads.
Seagate conservatively released a second-generation 15K SSHD product into its enterprise stack last year, but now that the approach has proven its viability, the company is pushing SSHD products downward into its popular Enteprise Performance 10K v8 products under the TurboBoost moniker.
Come along as we the take the new 10K spinners for a flashy ride and test the capabilities of the new SSHD products at Tom's IT Pro.
Paul Alcorn is a Contributing Editor for Tom's IT Pro, covering Storage. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.
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