All-flash storage has the potential to reduce total cost of ownership for some workloads, particularly those that require high levels of performance. All-flash storage uses solid-state drives to store data, which are much faster than traditional spinning hard disk drives (HDD). However (there's always that word…) all-flash storage is often more expensive than hard disk on a per-gigabyte basis.
Ok, so if TCO = Purchase Cost + Operating Costs, can you come out ahead with all-flash? It depends.
There are actually numerous factors on which it depends, but chief among them are the individual workloads, usage patterns, initial cost of the storage hardware, and the cost of software licenses. Still, despite the higher initial layout the following operating benefits are possible.
If you need high performance and low latency, the speed of all-flash is one of the advantages that can potentially lead to leaps in TCO. Improved application performance and faster access to data can reduce the time it takes for tasks to be completed and increase enterprise and human productivity.
All-flash storage also consumes less power and generates less heat than HDD storage, which can lead to cost savings on energy and cooling. (These are helpful factors when looking to "green" your ops, as well).
Also, with data reduction technologies such as compression and deduplication (and this is one area where the results from different vendors' algorithms are going to differ) all-flash storage can be more efficient at storing data than HDD and that can reduce the amount of storage required.
In addition, all-flash is going to be less prone to mechanical failure than HDD, resulting in less downtime and requiring less maintenance, repair, and replacement, over time.
There are a lot of factors involved, but many enterprises have found that all-flash is worth the investment. PoC's are always a great way to get a sense of how a given solution may work for your business.
Flash storage is a data storage technology that delivers high-speed, programmable memory. It is called flash storage because of the speed at which it writes data and performs input/output (I/O) operations.
All-flash storage has the potential to reduce total cost of ownership for some workloads, particularly those that require high levels of performance. All-flash storage uses solid-state drives to store data, which are much faster than traditional spinning hard disk drives (HDD). However (there's always that word…) all-flash storage is often more expensive than hard disk on a per-gigabyte basis.
Ok, so if TCO = Purchase Cost + Operating Costs, can you come out ahead with all-flash? It depends.
There are actually numerous factors on which it depends, but chief among them are the individual workloads, usage patterns, initial cost of the storage hardware, and the cost of software licenses. Still, despite the higher initial layout the following operating benefits are possible.
If you need high performance and low latency, the speed of all-flash is one of the advantages that can potentially lead to leaps in TCO. Improved application performance and faster access to data can reduce the time it takes for tasks to be completed and increase enterprise and human productivity.
All-flash storage also consumes less power and generates less heat than HDD storage, which can lead to cost savings on energy and cooling. (These are helpful factors when looking to "green" your ops, as well).
Also, with data reduction technologies such as compression and deduplication (and this is one area where the results from different vendors' algorithms are going to differ) all-flash storage can be more efficient at storing data than HDD and that can reduce the amount of storage required.
In addition, all-flash is going to be less prone to mechanical failure than HDD, resulting in less downtime and requiring less maintenance, repair, and replacement, over time.
There are a lot of factors involved, but many enterprises have found that all-flash is worth the investment. PoC's are always a great way to get a sense of how a given solution may work for your business.