Your business relies on storage, but traditional storage has not kept pace with your business. Now flash storage offers a generational leap in performance, while taking less out of your budget.
Flash storage is one of the most exciting technologies to arrive in the business world. But the idea persists that traditional hard drives, also called ‘spinning drives’, are still just as good. This is not the case: flash storage is far superior in terms of performance, while factors such as cost and reliability have surpassed spinning drives to make flash storage the preferred choice among future-minded companies.
But what does this mean from a business perspective? Rudi van Rensburg, senior manager for primary storage (all flash) at Dell EMC, outlines four points that show why adopting All Flash makes business sense:
Flash is a business case conversation
Nobody brings up storage from the vantage of a business case. Storage is something that just sits in the background and does its job: a brick in the enterprise technology wall.
This is not accidental. Spinning drive technology is decades old, so performance improvement has narrowed down to a trickle. Instead, when storage does come up, it’s usually to query redundancy and expansion plans.
But flash is entirely different, says Van Rensburg. It’s very fast, so the performance shift quickly becomes evident. It is also the preferred medium of modern applications, thus new software investments really appreciate working with all flash storage systems.
Flash also represents an ecosystem, not merely hardware. A flash investment includes engineering and software that brings far more to the table than spinning drives ever could. This opens the door for technology conversations that really matter.
“We do a full flash assessment with a business-as-usual approach. This gives a business case perspective around the impacts on the business, financial, operational and performance of the company. You could never address spinning disks as a business driver.”
Flash speeds up applications
The application is the heart of any modern business, such as an ERP suite that plugs into the numerous organs of the company. Much of today’s technology investment goes toward ensuring that the application, which could be from vendors such as SAP, Oracle or Microsoft (or completely custom-built), runs at its best level.
Here flash is a game changer, says Van Rensburg: “Flash lets us have true business conversations around storage, because it shifts the paradigm completely.
“We have clients who used flash to drop their application speeds from 30 milliseconds to less than 1 millisecond, in some cases doubling turnover due to jumps in efficiency and productivity. With spinning disks you could never talk at that level, because application consistency was not really a storage challenge.”
Flash gives your servers more for less
Companies look at two benchmarks to ensure success: how much money it brings in and how little it spends. Technology demands hefty investments, but offers little wiggle room. This is why slashing technology spend often also results in reduced company performance. It’s a delicate balance. Yet flash storage creates a whole new space for efficiency and cost-savings – quite literally.
“Let’s assume your business needs 100 terabytes of storage space,” explains Van Rensburg. “On a typical server cabinet, that could take up two entire racks. But the flash equivalent takes up a quarter of a rack, even less on some chassis. We’ve seen customers populate the rest of the rack space with other data centre requirements, such as computing, network hardware, etc. It’s more economical, because they can populate data centres differently.”
Flash is cheaper to maintain
There are several myths around flash that no longer hold true. One is that flash fails as often or more often than spinning drives. Yet the lack of spinning parts is a huge boon: enterprise-grade flash can be up to five times more reliable than spinning media.
There is such a thing as poorer grade flash, thus a good flash solutions provider must act as a buffer for quality control and price fluctuations, sourcing from several reliable vendors to ensure the best is used. They should offer a solid maintenance relationship as well, to ensure customers are not left in the lurch if something goes wrong.
“If you want to talk about the value of storage, talk about total cost of ownership. Power cooling reduction, floor space reduction and increased performance all help make flash cheaper over the next 10 years over both spinning disks and hybrid disk systems. Some worry about support and consistency.
The South African market
2016 proved to be the tipping point for flash in South Africa. Over half the business technology solutions sold by Dell EMC locally include XtremIO Flash Storage, while in the US that number is past 80%. Businesses are clearly seeing value in this new storage pedigree. Don’t let yours be left behind: start talking about all flash storage and your business.