Flash Storage – a Flash in the Pan or a bright future?

Flash technologies have made a significant impact on the enterprise storage space.  It has given some real answers to long term questions for getting faster, smarter and cost-effective storage solutions. Where the industry headed and what is more can be expected of it – an analysis.

Today, Flash memory is present everywhere – in small computing device- s and becoming increasingly more common for larger applications. The Random Access and the Read Only Memories – RAM and ROM, used to be the limited memory storage technologies, where the processes used to cache data for easy access.  Now, it is more ubiquitous. The size and complexity of flash-based systems varies for storage in wearables, embedded systems, smartphones, portable USB Drives, and scaling upwards to enterprise-class all-flash arrays. Flash is packaged in a variety of formats for different storage purposes.

Enterprise Flash Storage is growing faster than anticipated according to a Bloomberg news report.  Due to high performance and cost savings, there is a better-than-anticipated growth in the global Enterprise Flash market.   EMC leads the market with more than 30% in the newly changed pecking order.  With more web applications and number crunching applications like big data and analytics demanding faster access and performance, Flash Storage is poised to hit $2.25 billion revenue, globally, says Gartner.

IDC estimates the all-flash array market will grow to $1.2 billion in revenue by 2015 and is being embraced by Indian companies across sectors. Says Syed Masroor, Sales Director of Flash Storage business for EMC India, speaking on the latest trends of flash storage, ”Flash is rapidly disrupting the disk status quo. As it gets more pervasive, optimized, and affordable, new applications and new storage software stacks are also emerging that are built “ground-up” for solid-state. The economics and performance of Flash are at a point where the technology can have a revolutionary impact on enterprises, especially for transaction-intensive applications. India’s digital information explosion in the enterprise space is being driven by things like BYOD, evolving policy landscape demanding greater compliance, the increasing use of technologies like web 2.0 and virtualization (desktop, servers etc.) and applications like CRM, ERP and database analytics among others. To manage this information explosion, it is important for enterprise to invest in technologies that can help them drive better operational efficiencies and save cost.”

“Flash-based storage systems not only accelerate performance, they also bring IT flexibility and business agility into the overall IT equation—a must for CIOs who are continually challenged to maintain budgets, while increasing business agility and lowering TCO,” adds Masroor.  Business economics are affected by the decision to deploy flash in enterprise systems. There are many variables to consider when it comes to the ways  flash can increase efficiency and ROI of a data center– IOPS, watts, rack and even capacity. But one thing is certain: IT organizations can no longer afford to ignore the evolution towards an all-flash data center. Clearly, adoption is covering more ground – driving broader use across large data centers. This means that flash is being leveraged in more applications and databases – and that the performance gains for data-intensive and mission-critical workloads are deepening adoption in many organizations.

Flash brings some key challenges on how data is written and read from it, how it’s protected and how the endurance period stays long. Traditional disk based systems which are now available as hybrid Flash systems do not solve these issues effectively. There have been a number of innovations of Flash Storage in the EMC stables, to meet these and some more challenges.  EMC’s  XtremIO is an AFA built ground up for Flash. XtremIO ‘s inherent feature is that ensure the user gets fast performance, scale-out on demand, in-line efficiency features and highly flexible snapshots for operational efficiencies.  “It’s expected to lead to 50% savings in ownership costs which is the ultimate goal of any sector,” says Masroor.

The latest technology that supports enterprise meet the challenges on the current markets, is Hybrid Flash Systems. Defined as external storage systems that can  (but does not necessarily) use a mix of SSDs and HDDs to meet performance and capacity requirements. “Many vendors offer their HFAs in all-flash or mixed flash and HDD configurations,” says Masroor. IDC counts both the flash and the HDD-based value of HFAs in this study, regardless of whether those are all-flash or mixed configurations. EMC’s hybrid VMAX and VNX arrays, the XtremIO all-flash platform, and DSSD server-based flash offer a range of flash solutions in its portfolio that meet a wide set of requirements. EMC’s VMAX and VNX arrays follow the legacy software-licensing model, charging extra for add-on software functionality, whereas XtremIO follows the newer AFA model where all (or most) software functionalities are bundled in with the base platform purchase.

Hybrid arrays essentially mapped the gap between the $/B vs $/IOS equation.  With an addition of a layer of Flash, it is possible to double the nature of IOPS – this at an increase of 10-20% of an all-flash cost of similar capacity.  Companies like HP, IBM and EMC offer both in their portfolio.  The advantage is – it covers all type of landscapes.  But it goes back to the fact that customers eventually want to move towards an  all-flash storage, and the growth is evident.

There are few common use cases that that technology providers would agree – if the application demands guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), then an all flash storage is the way to go. Typically E-commerce (where user experience is key) and decision support analysis are two of the applications that fit into the ‘guaranteed QoS’ category.  Where there is no demand for guarantee, but unpredictability is the way of life, then hybrid storage is better off.  Examples are collaboration or email type of applications.

Flash storage remains a fraction of the global storage market of $26.5 billion.  EMC acquired xtremeIO in 2012, and has been able to reach revenues of more than $500 million globally.  EMC expects more than $ 1 billion in all flash sales in 2015, reports Bloomberg quoting Jeremy Burton, EMC’s Executive Vice President of products and marketing. Other major players like Hewlett Packard and NetApp are also showing significant market and have shot up on marketing positions against pure play Flash Storage vendors.

Some deployments speak of more than 25% savings on power savings.  Music, movie and other data intensive industries are looking to leverage Flash Storage to benefit from this now proven technology.   In India, E-commerce and analytics players, government and education service providers could leverage an ‘All Flash solution’.  The next three years will be interesting time for companies to leverage an all flash solution, and the benefit accrued will be the testimonial to Flash Storage’s bright future.