70% of Respondents Planning to Deploy SSDs

Storage Strategies NOW (SSG-NOW), a specialist storage analysis and research organization, released the findings of a new report and survey on solid state drives and high-speed memory.

Titled, Solid State Drives and High-Speed Memory: Adoption, Practice and Deployment, the report defines solid state storage, outlines its growth and details how businesses are adopting and deploying solid state storage for rapid access to transactional data, the cloud and virtual desktop infrastructures.
 
The report also includes the results of an IT Professionals Adoption Survey, co-sponsored by the Storage Networking Industry Association, which presents information on the status of solid state drives and high-speed memory.
 
Key findings of the report and survey:

• Over 70% of respondents are planning to deploy solid state drives and high-speed memory, with 25% already implemented, 32% evaluating and 31% currently implementing the technology;
• Speeding access to transactional, structured data is the driver to solid state drives for 46% of the respondents, followed by use as Tier 0 storage for primary data by 40% and storage bursting for 37%; and,
• 51% of the respondents are familiar or very familiar with the efforts of SNIA in advancing solid state storage performance standards.

What do you see as the impediments
to adopting SSDs or high speed memory
storage devices? (Select all that apply.)
Value                                        Percent %
High cost per Gigabyte                  76.2%
Write endurance                              41%
Wear-leveling                               34.4%
IOPs Read/write performance         21.3%
Latency                                        17.2%
Availability/reliability                     13.9%
No need for higher speed storage     3.1%
It's a new untested technology/
don't know enough about it            13.1%
Over-provisioning                            8.2%
Time required to implement             6.6%
Other, please specify                       4.9%

What do you see as the advantages
of adopting SSDs or high speed memory
storage devices? (Select all that apply.)
Value                                        Percent %
Solid state systems require
less power and reduce OPEX             74.6%
Need to reduce response times         50.8%
Non-mechanical devices are
more reliable than rotating media      46.7%
Improved user experience                 39.3%
Solid state systems allow us
to buy lower cost rotating media
in hybrid arrays                                28.7%
Other                                                 1.6%

"The IT Professionals Solid State Drive and High-Speed Memory Adoption Survey sheds new light on how organizations will deploy solid state storage and high-speed memory," says Deni Connor, founding analyst for SSG-NOW. "Among the findings are that 51% of the respondents will deploy solid state storage or high-speed memory in the next year and 38% have implemented Pie-based adapter in server systems."
 
"With the SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification (SSS PTS) for Enterprise and Client test suites,  solid state device vendors and system vendors alike have found great value in being able to uniformly compare and contrast different manufacturer's product capabilities," says Wayne M. Adams, Chairman, SNIA Board of Directors.
 
The new report outlines technology solutions from more than 55 hardware and software vendors and organizations with Tier 0 and storage IO initiatives. It also includes detailed product validation and pricing information and real-world use case scenarios, as well as best practices for selecting, deploying and managing solid state storage.
 
Methodology
Information for this report was obtained through a number of sources including vendor questionnaires and interviews, end-user interaction, available market data and a survey of IT professionals, conducted in the second quarter of 2011.
 
Pricing and Availability
Solid State Drives and High-Speed Memory: Adoption, Practice and Deployment is available for purchase. The report, co-sponsored by the Storage Networking Industry Association, Kaminario, Pliant Technology (now SanDisk), OCZ, STEC, Virident and WhipTail Technologies, is $7,500. A separate copy of the IT Professionals Adoption Survey is $2,500.