Last month, we introduced solid state storage arrays, which use flash memory drives in traditional hard-drive form factors, and this month, we will explore some of their applications.

Solid state storage arrays are the next-generation solution for the rapid storage and delivery of data and applications. They provide random access times magnitudes faster than hard disk drives–approximately .1 millisecond, compared to 5 to 10 milliseconds. They are available with common interfaces like SATA and SAS RAID, rendering them easy to integrate into SAN and network NAS storage environments.

With their superior input/output (I/O) speeds, they effectively support storage virtualization, cloud storage, unified storage, storage for video, data archives, and high-performance, mission-critical applications. They resolve I/O issues without the cost and complexity of deploying large numbers of conventional, frequently under-utilized hard drives.  As a result,  solid state storage arrays SSD are often the top tier in an automated storage tiering strategy, which is called Tier 0.

Among their many applications, they are ideal for addressing the boot storms of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments. Boot storms occur when hundreds or thousands of users concurrently log in at the beginning of the workday, overwhelming the I/O performance of spinning disk storage arrays. With their extraordinary read performance, Solid state storage SSD arrays can mitigate this problem.

Another good use case is bolstering cloud storage. Clouds are cost-effective repositories for large amounts of data, but accessing data from the cloud can result in latency. Enterprises can deploy a solid state storage SSD array in the data center to host frequently used data that resides on the cloud. They will gain the economies of cloud storage with the blistering speeds of an onsite solid state storage SSD array—a win-win situation.