Making the case for Solid State Storage
As the performance of flash computing devices improves the cost associated with them is expected to fall. The advantages are already well-known – lower power consumption, cooler operating temperatures and less strain on hardware. 
Yet making the case for them is still a difficult task, namely because consumers are skeptical about spending more cash up front, even if it means they save in the long run.
Solid State Drives: To Buy or Not to Buy
While there are pros and cons to every new technology, the proof lies in the real world applications we inevitably apply them to; colocation resellers have likely stock piled an entire army of HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) - that are at the very least, mid-cycle in their life span. At this point, it may not make sense financially to invest in newer Solid State Storage systems.
However, for larger companies, take for example Amazon web services, equipping servers with SSDs allows them to serve an entire community of users who rely on them to stream movies, music and run cloud-based web applications from afar; SSDs have less latency and enable Amazon to deliver high I/O instances to consumers. They have proven themselves in the real world and in this case, Amazon’s move to outfit servers with nothing but SDDs makes sense entirely.
Solid State Drives: Worth the investment for consumers?
Amazon Web Services proves a case can be made for SSDs in the data center, but what about in consumer devices? Should you pop for one to replace the ailing hard drive in your personal laptop? Perhaps, but then again, it all depends on how the technology is deployed. Sure, SSDs seem to offer more reliability, but if that old laptop is on the way out, then why spend the money. Consumers need to be enticed by OEMs - or at least reassured that installing a SSD in their ageing laptop will buy them some time until they’re ready for an upgrade.
Solid State Drives in the Data Center
Smaller colocation companies are accustomed to seeing a lower percentage of servers equipped with SSDs show up in their data center. What they don’t notice is the positive effect the presence of such machines may have on their overall cost of ownership; servers equipped with SSDs run cooler, which reduces energy consumption from cooling systems such as fans and condensers.
Again, this is but a small positive impact that SSDs have on the networking environment, but SSDs are worth it only if you consider what type of machine you will putting them in and what exactly the end goal is. If your organization plans on deploying multiple servers equipped with SSDs, and does so within an in-house facility, then it would make sense, as the performance is superior to that of HDDs. The steeper cost wouldn’t seem as bad if IT managers knew that money was coming back to them in the form of utility savings. Just how long such a turnaround may take is for the accountant to decide.
IOPS Performance of an SSD vs HDD
The reality is, outfitting leased servers with SSDs may be the least of a colocation providers worries, despite the obvious performance gains. So much more goes through a colocation facility; cabling, connectivity, redundant power and cooling supplies - not to mention multiple ISP providers that are sharing bandwidth both upstream and downstream, to ensure every client has ultra fast connectivity to and from the data center. SSDs, on both the enterprise and commercial level, are but a luxury not a necessity. If the economies of scale have taught us anything it’s that nearly every mass-produced commodity gets cheaper over time; you might as well just wait it out.
About the author: James Mulvey is a blog writer and editor at Colocation America. Follow him on Google + to learn more about all the latest happenings within the data center industry.
