SSDs Proving too Costly for Datacentres?

By Greg McNevin

September 29, 2008: With prices of flash memory rapidly dropping and interest in solid state disks (SSDs) growing, Research and Markets has taken a look at the role of SSDs in datacentres and concluded that industry take up will be slow.

Despite a fervour of interest in the technology, which currently sits between disk and DRAM solid-state memory in terms of both performance and price, the research firm says that price is proving to be a major inhibitor.

In its “Flash Blazes into the Data Centre” report, the research firm says that while its falling price has given solid-state flash memory a heady debut as a mass storage technology in the data centre, the reality of widespread take up is currently more of a fairytale.

The firm claims that vendors have hyped the corporate use of flash memory, with some even talking of a “flash revolution”. However, it claims that the take-up of so-called tier-zero flash storage will be slow, as flash will remain hugely more expensive than disk per unit of capacity.

Furthermore, even though the price of flash is set to continue tumbling, Research and Markets says that this price gap will only narrow slightly over the coming years, because disk will also continue to fall in price rapidly.

SSDs still offer many benefits in a broad range of applications, however, it appears that the honeymoon period for the technology is drawing to an end and the cost/benefit reality could be setting in for many companies toying with making the switch.

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