Solving Enterprise Storage Challenges With SSD Hybrid Technologies

In today's competitive environment, organizations must balance costs with performance and ROI in virtually every endeavor including technology. While moving to a virtual desktop infrastructure can streamline operations and reduce costs, it also brings with it numerous storage challenges that must also be solved - again by balancing costs with performance and ROI. SSD hybrid storage can play an important role in this task.

Enterprise Storage Challenges in a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Virtualization is an amazing breakthrough that allows the IT department to centrally manage virtual machines. Rather than investing in costly standalone PCs with traditional operating systems for each worker, an organization can invest in "thin" client machines that access a virtual desktop. With a virtual desktop infrastructure, each client can be set up in minutes based off of a master virtual machine. Not only does this save time and money from the IT department's perspective, it creates consistency from one client to the next. Virtual desktops can also be accessed by users remotely on other devices. Despite these advantages (and many others), storage must be addressed in a virtual desktop infrastructure. After all, thin clients may not have individual hard disks. Even if they do, it's smarter to pool storage.

However, investing in enterprise storage needs to make sense. Challenges include the following:

· Capacity - Whether choosing traditional storage, all flash storage, or SSD hybrid storage, the array must have sufficient capacity along with the ability to easily add more as needed.

· Compatibility - Is the storage array compatible with the virtual desktop infrastructure, servers, network, and file systems?

· Usability - Is it easy to use and configure?

· Performance - Will the storage array perform at an acceptable level? Will performance be compromised as the virtual desktop infrastructure grows? Can it handle "boot storms" and other high usage issues?

· Reliability - What happens if a component fails? Will the entire array go offline? Can components be swapped out without bringing the entire array offline?

· Data protection and recovery - Enterprises cannot afford to lose their data. What data protection features are built into the array? What recovery options are available?

· Compliance - Organizations must often comply with government regulations that specify how personal data (such as financial or healthcare information) is stored and protected. Does the array comply with applicable regulations?

· Value - How much does storage cost per gigabyte? Is it a good value compared to other options? Is it a smart use of money?

The SSD Hybrid Storage Advantage

While traditional and all flash storage arrays have their place, SSD hybrid storage blends the best of both worlds. It uses traditional hard disks to store the bulk of the data and flash arrays to store the most commonly used data. This results in a satisfying blend of capacity, performance, and cost. In addition, you can easily add capacity as needed. Many SSD hybrid storage systems include advanced features that address compliance issues, data protection and recovery, scalability, compatibility, and more.

If you're looking for a storage solution for your virtual desktop infrastructure, make sure to look into SSD hybrid storage for the best blend of performance, price, and capacity.

Stephanie Rose is the author of this article on the enterprise storage challenged with ssd hybrid technologies. Having been in this industry for quite awhile, she enjoys sharing tips with her readers and how setting up a virtual desktop infrastructure can be beneficial to their enterprise. In her free time she enjoys taking trips to the beach and spending time with her family.

Although hard disk drives have been around for such a long time, they have steadfastly stuck to the same basic layout and mechanical design. This has meant that although advancements in technology means they are getting ever great capacity and versatility, they still have many limitations.

For example, as they're a mechanical device, they suffer from wear and tear, high power consumption and the worst thing of all - sensitivity.

If you drop a hard disk from a desk when it's running, don't expect to be able to get anything off it without it first being sent to a disaster recovery centre. This is one of the main failings of hard drives and so it's not surprising that they haven't made their way into more devices or items that need to be used in rugged environments.

And so the technology world has been waiting for a solution, an answer that will allow them to carry vast amounts of data around without fear of it being trashed because you drop it on a dirt track. Well now that call has been answered with the invention of the SSD or Solid State Drive a new technology that gives us an incredible amount of storage with no moving parts.

What these drives do is to utilise semiconductor memory which has actually been around for a very long time but which has suffered from being high price and low capacity. Now that technology has moved on we can get SSD that offers similar capacity to hard disk drives and much faster access times.

Access speed is where these drives really win out, too. Old mechanical drives obviously have to move heads across a platter and pick up data from the disk before passing it back to the bus to be process. SSD simply takes the data straight to the bus. It's instant access (well, almost) and therefore useful in critical environments such as measuring and emergency systems.

What's more, because the components can be fitted on a board rather than having to be encased in bulky boxes, they become more portable and can be used in many more devices. For example, you may have an old laptop with a creaky hard drive that is maybe on its way out and in need of replacement. The traditional way to do this is to take it back to the shop where the technician will spend an hour or so removing the old drive and replacing it.

Now you can simply pop in an SSD mounted on a PCMCIA board right into the expansion slot of the PC - an instant hard drive.

Of course, as with hard drives the capacity of these devices will constantly increase but also just like hard drives the prices will continue to tumble making them the ideal consumer device that we can all afford ssd solution ouedkniss.

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