Factors affecting direct attached storage device performance in the application layer

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The new HP 3G SATA SSDs powered by Samsung technology are available in capacities of 100 GB,
200 GB, and 400 GB for HP ProLiant Gen8 and G7 servers. HP 100 GB SSD pricing provides a
competitive cost alternative with 146GB 15k HDDs and other lower capacity HDDs that are going end of
life.
Matching storage solutions with application-environment requirements goes beyond looking at
specifications. It requires knowledge of current and future business needs. Table 4 identifies criteria for
choosing server storage options. HP representatives can help you understand which storage options best
meet your needs.
Table 4: Criteria for selecting a storage option
HDD
SSD
Mission critical


Bulk storage

Long-term data retention

$/IOPS

$/throughput

OLTP
Absolute storage capacity versus speed (throughput and IOPS) is a delicate balance in mission-critical
environments. Financial trading requires historical analytics daily. Automated trading adds new dynamics
to the market structure. Many financial institutions are finding that legacy (HDD only) storage solutions
cannot keep pace with escalating demands for real-time access to more information. To remain competitive,
financial institutions must have a mixture of HDD and SSD capacity to support data throughput and
processing requirements.
Streaming media services
Video broadcast and streaming applications place a heavy demand on storage systems. The technology
must provide content to thousands or millions without performance issues that compromise quality. Doing
that requires vast amounts of storage space, fast file request handling, and fast retrieval of content. HDDs
will continue to address capacity demands because of lower cost per gigabyte for long-term storage. SSDs
will begin to handle more concurrent video stream requests because of lower throughput cost for these high-
bit-rate streams. The combination of HDDs for capacity and SSDs for random read throughput will be the
strategy most providers pursue.
High performance computing
Many enterprise storage managers are starting to use solid-state drive technology in a high performance
tier of storage called "Tier 0." Tier 0 is SSD-based storage that can improve performance beyond what
Tier 1 (production) storage can now offer. Tier 0 includes applications with high write I/O transactions.
Applications in the finance and video editing industries are examples.
Deploying HDD-based storage in some high performance tiers is challenging. This is because cost,
footprint, power requirements, and operational complexity are becoming unsustainable in a wide variety of
situations that demand Tier 0 IOPS.