Prediction and discussion: hybrid storage systems will give way to all-flash
According to analysts from IHS Markit, hybrid storage systems (storage) based on HDD and SSD will be in lower demand this year. We discuss the situation.
Photos - Jyrki Huusko - CC BY
In 2018, flash arrays accounted for 29% of the storage system market. On hybrid solutions - 38%. IHS Markit are convinced that this year SSD-drives will take the lead. According to their estimates, the income from sales of flash arrays will increase to 33%, and from hybrid - will decrease to 30%.
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Experts attribute the low demand for hybrid systems to a shrinking HDD market. IDC expects that by 2021, the number of HDDs produced will drop to 284 million devices, which is 140 million fewer than three years ago. The market volume for the same period will be reduced by 750 million dollars. Statista confirms this trend, according to an analytical resource, since 2014 the volume of HDDs produced has decreased by 40 million devices.
HDD sales are falling in the data center segment. According to Western Digital (WD) financial report, over the past year the number of HDDs sold for data centers fell from 7.6 million devices to 5.6 million ( p . 8 ). Last year, WD even announced that they were forced to close their factory in Malaysia. Also last summer, Seagate shares fell by 7%.
The volume of processed data increases. IDC says that the amount of data generated in the world will grow by 61% annually - by 2025 it will reach 175 zettabyte. It is expected that half of this data will be processed by data centers. To cope with the load, they will need productive SSD-based storage systems. There are cases where the transition to the "hardcore" reduced the time to download information from the database six times.
Also, IT companies are developing new technologies designed to further increase the performance of all-flash storage. For example, the NVMe-oF (NVM Express over Fabrics) protocol. It allows you to connect drives to a server using PCI Express (instead of less efficient SAS and SATA interfaces ). The protocol also contains a set of commands that reduce the delay in the transfer of information between SSDs. Such solutions are already on the market.
The cost of SSD is reduced. At the start of 2018, the price of a gigabyte SSD-memory was ten times higher than that of the HDD. However, by the end of 2018, it fell two to three times (from 20–30 to 10 cents per gigabyte). According to experts, by the end of 2019 it will be eight cents per gigabyte. In the near future, prices for SSD and HDD will be equal - this can happen as early as 2021.
One of the reasons for the rapid reduction in the cost of SSD is the competition between manufacturers who seek to attract customers with low prices. Some companies, such as Huawei, are already selling solid-state drives for the price of hard drives with similar capacity.
Energy consumption is growing. Each year, data centers consume 200 terawatt-hours of electricity. According to some data , by 2030 this figure will increase fifteen times. Data center operators are trying to improve the efficiency of the computing infrastructure and reduce energy consumption.
One of the ways to reduce the cost of electricity in the data center are solid-state drives. For example, KIO Networks, operating in the cloud sector, SSD reduced the amount of electricity consumed by the data center by 60%. At the same time, solid-state drives have higher energy efficiency than hard drives. In a study of Brazilian and French scientists from 2018, SSD outpaced HDD in terms of the amount of data transferred to joule energy.
Photo - Peter Burka - CC BY-SA
Hard drives are too early to write off. For a long time, data center operators will use them for cold storage of archives and backups. From 2016 to 2021 sales of HDD for storing rarely used data will double. The trend can also be seen in the financial reports of the manufacturer of hard drives Seagate: from 2013 to 2018, the demand for the company's products for “cold” tasks increased by 39% (slide 8 of the presentation ).
Cold storage does not require high performance, so it makes no sense to implement SSD arrays in them - especially while the price for solid-state drives (although it is decreasing) remains high. While HDD remain in business and will be further used in the data center.
In the ITGLOBAL.COM corporate blog:
Photos - Jyrki Huusko - CC BY
In 2018, flash arrays accounted for 29% of the storage system market. On hybrid solutions - 38%. IHS Markit are convinced that this year SSD-drives will take the lead. According to their estimates, the income from sales of flash arrays will increase to 33%, and from hybrid - will decrease to 30%.
')
Experts attribute the low demand for hybrid systems to a shrinking HDD market. IDC expects that by 2021, the number of HDDs produced will drop to 284 million devices, which is 140 million fewer than three years ago. The market volume for the same period will be reduced by 750 million dollars. Statista confirms this trend, according to an analytical resource, since 2014 the volume of HDDs produced has decreased by 40 million devices.
HDD sales are falling in the data center segment. According to Western Digital (WD) financial report, over the past year the number of HDDs sold for data centers fell from 7.6 million devices to 5.6 million ( p . 8 ). Last year, WD even announced that they were forced to close their factory in Malaysia. Also last summer, Seagate shares fell by 7%.
Why the demand for SSD is growing
The volume of processed data increases. IDC says that the amount of data generated in the world will grow by 61% annually - by 2025 it will reach 175 zettabyte. It is expected that half of this data will be processed by data centers. To cope with the load, they will need productive SSD-based storage systems. There are cases where the transition to the "hardcore" reduced the time to download information from the database six times.
Also, IT companies are developing new technologies designed to further increase the performance of all-flash storage. For example, the NVMe-oF (NVM Express over Fabrics) protocol. It allows you to connect drives to a server using PCI Express (instead of less efficient SAS and SATA interfaces ). The protocol also contains a set of commands that reduce the delay in the transfer of information between SSDs. Such solutions are already on the market.
The cost of SSD is reduced. At the start of 2018, the price of a gigabyte SSD-memory was ten times higher than that of the HDD. However, by the end of 2018, it fell two to three times (from 20–30 to 10 cents per gigabyte). According to experts, by the end of 2019 it will be eight cents per gigabyte. In the near future, prices for SSD and HDD will be equal - this can happen as early as 2021.
One of the reasons for the rapid reduction in the cost of SSD is the competition between manufacturers who seek to attract customers with low prices. Some companies, such as Huawei, are already selling solid-state drives for the price of hard drives with similar capacity.
Energy consumption is growing. Each year, data centers consume 200 terawatt-hours of electricity. According to some data , by 2030 this figure will increase fifteen times. Data center operators are trying to improve the efficiency of the computing infrastructure and reduce energy consumption.
One of the ways to reduce the cost of electricity in the data center are solid-state drives. For example, KIO Networks, operating in the cloud sector, SSD reduced the amount of electricity consumed by the data center by 60%. At the same time, solid-state drives have higher energy efficiency than hard drives. In a study of Brazilian and French scientists from 2018, SSD outpaced HDD in terms of the amount of data transferred to joule energy.
Photo - Peter Burka - CC BY-SA
What's with hdd
Hard drives are too early to write off. For a long time, data center operators will use them for cold storage of archives and backups. From 2016 to 2021 sales of HDD for storing rarely used data will double. The trend can also be seen in the financial reports of the manufacturer of hard drives Seagate: from 2013 to 2018, the demand for the company's products for “cold” tasks increased by 39% (slide 8 of the presentation ).
Cold storage does not require high performance, so it makes no sense to implement SSD arrays in them - especially while the price for solid-state drives (although it is decreasing) remains high. While HDD remain in business and will be further used in the data center.
In the ITGLOBAL.COM corporate blog:
- Why should a cloud provider client know about the reliability of a data center?
- GDPR effect: how the new regulation has affected the IT ecosystem
- NetApp storage systems in various business areas: case studies
- Servers for SAP: Basic Platforms
- NetApp from A to Z: a ​​review of vendor technologies used in modern storage systems
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/452682/
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