First performance spec to solidify SSD

The storage industry is moving to improve the chances for solid state disk technology in the market, notes Neal Ekker

Ekker: Look to the SNIA for greater clarity on SSD

Industry analysts such as Gartner and IDC have predicted nearly 100 per cent annual sales growth rates for solid state disks (SSD) for the next several years. I think you should be doing a SSD marketing and sales strategy right now.

Probably the largest hurdle for SSD sales and adoption is the lack of accurate information about technology performance. Many vendor claims seem unrealistic, unreliable, confusing, or even misleading.

However, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is working on a draft performance specification to help clear up much of the confusion. This is scheduled to be released for review soon.

The SSD market was small until recently, when cheaper enterprise-class NAND Flash SSD began appearing. This created greater market interest – but, unlike mechanical spinning hard disk drives, NAND Flash can perform unpredictably.

Currently, when you read marketing collateral from different SSD vendors you may not know whether the performance numbers you see are burst or sustained performance, 100 per cent read workload or a more realistic read/write mix, small data block or large, and so on.

After a draft of the new performance spec has been released, you should begin querying your SSD suppliers about it. If they aren’t enthusiastic, you should push them to announce which SSD performance benchmarking and reporting standard they will support.

Of course, there won’t yet be any other comprehensive SSD standards around. The SNIA working group specification will be the first of its kind and should help bring clarity that boosts sales.

Neal Ekker is vice president of channel sales at Texas Memory Systems